AI Research Scientist, Agentic Systems (Remote)

CrowdStrike, Inc.; Virginia (MN); Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market-leading compensation

Equity awards

Comprehensive wellness programs

Paid time off

Job summary

CrowdStrike, Inc. is expanding its Data Science team to build agentic systems for cybersecurity. You will train models and develop AI agents to automate analyst tasks on trillion-behavioral events daily.

The role emphasizes cutting-edge ML research, large-scale data processing, and collaboration with Engineering, Data Science, and Managed Services to push prototypes toward production. A strong foundation in ML and RLHF is essential.

Qualifications

• Strong foundations in ML, probability, and statistics.
• PhD-level depth in modern ML research, not required but mastery expected.
• Experience training generative models and LLMs.

Responsibilities

• Work at the intersection of AI and Threat Research.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity experts on analyst workflows.
• Post-train LLMs and agents to automate security tasks.
• Develop AI agents and complex workflows with planning and memory.
• Benchmark agentic systems with rigorous evals.

Skills

ML foundations

Statistics

Uncertainty handling

LLM training fundamentals

Reinforcement learning

Agent architectures

Prompt optimization

CUDA/GPU experience

Education

PhD-equivalent mastery in ML

Tools

PyTorch

Hugging Face Transformers/TRL/PEFT

DeepSpeed/FSDP

vLLM/TGI/SGLang

Job description

As a global leader in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern organizations. Since 2011, our mission hasn’t changed — we’re here to stop breaches, and we’ve redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced AI-native platform. We work on large scale distributed systems, processing almost 3 trillion events per day and this traffic is growing daily. Our customers span all industries, and they count on CrowdStrike to keep their businesses running, their communities safe and their lives moving forward. We're proud to work for a mission-driven company leveraging AI to transform the way we work. CrowdStrikers drive their careers through flexibility and autonomy while also being expected to contribute to a culture of responsible AI adoption, experimentation, and innovation. We use an AI-first mindset as a force multiplier to proactively and continuously accelerate execution, build expertise, uncover insights, and solve complex problems. We’re always looking to add talented CrowdStrikers to the team who have limitless passion, a relentless focus on innovation and a fanatical commitment to our customers, our community and each other. Ready to join a mission that matters? The future of cybersecurity starts with you.

About the Role:

The Data Science team is expanding and is looking for a Data Scientist to help build the next generation of agentic systems for cybersecurity. CrowdStrike's cybersecurity data is one-of-a-kind: we process nearly a trillion behavioral events per day. You'll work where Machine Learning, Big Data, and Cybersecurity converge — training models, building AI agents, and rigorously measuring whether they work — on data and problems you won't find anywhere else.

What You'll Do:

• Work at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Threat Research
• Work closely with subject-matter experts in cybersecurity to understand analyst workflows and their security operations procedures
• Post-train LLMs and agents — supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning (RLHF/RLAIF, PPO/GRPO/DPO, reward modeling) — to automate analyst procedures and improve reliability on real security tasks
• Devise AI agents and combine them into increasingly complex workflows: planning and reasoning loops, tool and function calling, and retrieval and memory
• Research new approaches to agentic planning, and prototype state-of-the-art methods from the literature
• Establish objective criteria for benchmarking agentic systems — evals, LLM-as-judge pipelines, and trajectory-level metrics, with real statistical rigor
• Optimize prompts and inference to get the most out of every model
• Collaborate and coordinate across Engineering, Data Science, and Managed Services teams, and partner with engineers to take prototypes toward production
• Keep track of developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence and help identify, define, and prioritize areas for research

What You'll Need:

• Excellent foundations in machine learning, probability, and statistics, with sound instincts for uncertainty, statistical skew/variance, and experimental design
• PhD-level depth of understanding in modern machine learning research —a doctorate itself is not required, but we expect equivalent mastery, including the ability to read, critique, implement, and improve upon current papers
• Experience training generative models, with a strong command of LLM training fundamentals (architecture, optimization, tokenization, data, and scaling behavior)
• Reinforcement learning / post-training as a core skill: RLHF/RLAIF, policy optimization (PPO/GRPO/DPO), reward modeling, and building RL environments for agents
• Experience building agentic systems: agent architectures (ReAct, planning, reflection), tool and function calling, and retrieval/memory/context management
• Experience with systematic prompt optimization, and with designing and building evals for LLM systems
• Fluency with GPUs, PyTorch, and the common LLM training and serving stack (e.g., Hugging Face Transformers/TRL/PEFT, DeepSpeed/FSDP, vLLM/TGI/SGLang)
• Strong, reproducible research engineering: clean Python and disciplined experiment tracking that your collaborators can build on
• Ability to work independently on ambiguous and complex objectives, and to communicate clearly within a large project team
• Proven experience utilizing AI technologies to enhance decision-making, streamline workflows and processes, improve efficiency and drive business outcomes.

Bonus Points:

• Experience generating training data and environments — synthetic data, agent trajectories/rollouts, and task simulators
• Familiarity with inference-time scaling / test-time compute (search, self-consistency, verifier-guided decoding, long chain-of-thought)
• Experience with agent safety and guardrails: sandboxing, abuse/jailbreak resistance, and reliability for autonomous systems
• A knack for interpretability and failure analysis — diagnosing why a model or agent fails, not just that it does
• Notable open-source contributions and excellent technical writing
• Passionate about cybersecurity, with a firm understanding of the problem space — or passionate about applying your machine-learning skillset to a new domain such as cybersecurity (a security background is a plus, not a requirement)
• An independent self-starter who likes to take ownership and seeks out new challenges, and is thirsty for knowledge — never hesitant to step outside your comfort zone to learn new technologies, algorithms, and concepts

#LI-Remote
#LI-RC1

Benefits of Working at CrowdStrike:

• Market leader in compensation and equity awards
• Comprehensive physical and mental wellness programs
• Competitive vacation and holidays for recharge
• Paid parental and adoption leaves
• Professional development opportunities for all employees regardless of level or role
• Employee Networks, geographic neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to build connections
• Vibrant office culture with world class amenities
• Great Place to Work Certified™ across the globe

CrowdStrike is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging where everyone is valued for who they are and empowered to succeed. We support veterans and individuals with disabilities through our affirmative action program.

CrowdStrike is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment. The Company does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, creed, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy or pregnancy-related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical disability (including HIV and AIDS), mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, membership or activity in a local human rights commission, status with regard to public assistance, or any other characteristic protected by law. We base all employment decisions--including recruitment, selection, training, compensation, benefits, discipline, promotions, transfers, lay-offs, return from lay-off, terminations and social/recreational programs--on valid job requirements.

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Find out more about your rights as an applicant.

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Right to Work

CrowdStrike, Inc. is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. Placement within the pay range is dependent on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications, job level, supervisory status, and location. The base salary range for this position for all U.S. candidates is $120,000 - $180,000 per year, with eligibility for bonuses, equity grants and a comprehensive benefits package that includes health insurance, 401k and paid time off.

For detailed information about the U.S. benefits package, please click here.