AI Cyber Testing & Evaluation Research Lead

RAND Corporation; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 146,000 - 261,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Sabbatical pay

Health insurance

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Retirement plan

Paid time off

Job summary

RAND Corporation seeks a Research Lead – AI Cyber Testing & Evaluation to oversee budgets, guide cross-disciplinary teams, and build evaluation systems for AI models across the attack lifecycle. The role focuses on benchmarks for autonomous operations and red-team style assessments, with findings presented to senior decision makers.

The ideal candidate will have substantial leadership, security engineering, and programming experience, plus the ability to communicate complex results effectively

Qualifications

• PhD with at least 3 years of professional experience.
• Master’s degree with at least 6 years of relevant experience.
• Bachelor’s degree with at least 8 years of relevant experience.
• Master’s or PhD preferred.

Responsibilities

• Manage research budgets and personnel.
• Oversee complex technical research and policy analysis projects.
• Lead multidisciplinary teams of policy researchers, engineers, and scientists.
• Develop systems to evaluate AI performance across the full attack lifecycle.
• Create benchmarks for autonomous operations, multi-stage operations, stealth, and defense evasion.
• Conduct red-team operations and offensive cyber capability development.
• Produce detailed technical analyses, evaluation frameworks, and policy briefs.
• Communicate research findings to senior government and industry leaders.

Skills

Security engineering

Team leadership

Policy analysis

Programming (Python/Java/C/C++)

Threat modeling

English communication

MS Office

Education

PhD in a relevant field

Master’s degree with 6+ years

Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years

CNODP/RIOT/FORGE or equivalent

Tools

Red-team operations

Security research tooling

Job description

RAND Corporation seeks a Research Lead – AI Cyber Testing & Evaluation to oversee budgets, guide cross-disciplinary teams, and build evaluation systems for AI models across the attack lifecycle. The role focuses on benchmarks for autonomous operations and red-team style assessments, with findings presented to senior decision makers.

The ideal candidate will have substantial leadership, security engineering, and programming experience, plus the ability to communicate complex results effectively