Senior AI Security Researcher | LLM Post-Training

Palo Alto Networks; California (MO); On-site; USD 163,000 - 264,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Sr Principal AI Researcher to advance cybersecurity capabilities of large language models and autonomous AI agents. You will design evaluation environments, create high-quality security datasets, and develop methods for complex tasks spanning vulnerability research, threat analysis, detection, and secure coding.

You will collaborate across security research, ML engineering, and product teams to translate research into production capabilities, driving real-world

Qualifications

• Strong programming in Python and at least one system language (C/C++, Rust, Java, or Go).
• Experience designing datasets, benchmarks, graders, or evaluation frameworks with measurable outcomes.
• Experience with post-training methods like supervised fine-tuning, RL, or distillation.
• Experience with large codebases, security tools, testing frameworks, and containerized environments.

Responsibilities

• Advance AI security research for LLMs and autonomous AI agents.
• Develop high-quality security datasets, synthetic data, and adversarial examples.
• Design evaluations for security reasoning, threat analysis, and automated workflows.
• Collaborate with Security Researchers, ML Engineers, and product teams to move research to production capabilities.

Skills

Python

LLM systems

Cybersecurity

Code analysis

Containerized environments

Education

BS/MS in CS/ML/AI/Cybersecurity

Tools

Docker

Testing frameworks

Git/CI

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Sr Principal AI Researcher to advance cybersecurity capabilities of large language models and autonomous AI agents. You will design evaluation environments, create high-quality security datasets, and develop methods for complex tasks spanning vulnerability research, threat analysis, detection, and secure coding.

You will collaborate across security research, ML engineering, and product teams to translate research into production capabilities, driving real-world