Senior Research Scientist, AI for Cybersecurity

NVIDIA Corporation; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 224,000 - 431,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity and benefits

Job summary

NVIDIA Corporation in Santa Clara, CA is seeking a Senior Scientist to lead research advancing AI models and agents for cybersecurity and applying them to critical security problems. You will elevate capabilities in security reasoning, code/system understanding, planning, tool use, and long-horizon investigations, while ensuring robustness to adversaries and practical deployment.

Collaborate with AI, security, research, engineering and product teams; publish original research; mentor

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 5+ years of relevant research experience with publications, open-source work, patents, or collaborations.

Responsibilities

• Define a high-impact research agenda advancing AI models and agents for cybersecurity.
• Improve model and agent capabilities for security reasoning, code/system understanding, planning, tool use, memory, and long-horizon investigation.
• Develop AI-powered capabilities for vulnerability discovery, secure development, threat detection, malware analysis, and automated defense.
• Build and evaluate prototypes in realistic environments, measuring detection quality, false positives, time to insight, analyst effectiveness, security risk, and scalability.
• Collaborate across AI, security, research, engineering, and product teams; publish original research; mentor researchers and interns.

Skills

Python

AI research

Strong communication

Mentorship

Security concepts

Education

PhD or equivalent

Tools

AI frameworks

Security tooling

Job description

We are looking for a Senior Scientist to lead research on advancing AI models and agents for cybersecurity and applying them to important security problems. This includes improving capabilities such as security reasoning, code and system understanding, planning, tool use, long-horizon investigation, and effective collaboration with human defenders, as well as applying these capabilities to vulnerability discovery, secure development, threat and anomaly detection, malware and attack analysis, incident investigation, security validation, and automated defense.

The ideal candidate will advance the underlying models, agent architectures, data, training and post-training methods, and evaluations needed for effective cybersecurity, while addressing the requirements of real security environments: high precision, robustness to adaptive adversaries, explainability, privacy, secure deployment, and effective human oversight. You will connect foundational AI and security research with practical tools and workflows that materially improve prevention, detection, investigation, and response. NVIDIA is a leader in accelerated computing and AI systems. This role offers the opportunity to set research direction, influence future platforms, and translate foundational advances into practical capabilities in collaboration with research, product, and engineering teams.

What you'll be doing:

• Define a high-impact research agenda and lead projects that advance AI models and agents for cybersecurity and apply them to important security problems.
• Improve model and agent capabilities for security reasoning, code and system understanding, planning, tool use, memory, long-horizon investigation, and collaboration with human defenders through advances in architectures, data, training, post-training, and evaluation.
• Develop AI-powered capabilities for vulnerability discovery, secure development, threat detection, malware analysis, incident investigation, security validation, and automated defense that are robust to adversarial manipulation, uncertainty, distribution shift, and incomplete or noisy operational data.
• Build and evaluate prototypes in realistic environments, measuring detection quality, false positives, time to insight, analyst effectiveness, security risk, and operational scalability.
• Collaborate across AI, security, research, engineering, and product teams; publish original research; mentor researchers and interns; and help translate advances into deployed capabilities.

What we need to see:

• A Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of relevant experience. An established record of research excellence demonstrated through influential publications, open-source systems, patents, technology transfer, or substantial research collaborations.
• Deep expertise in one or more relevant areas such as agentic AI, model training, reasoning and tool use, machine learning for security, vulnerability research, program analysis, software security, intrusion detection, malware analysis, or security operations.
• Experience defining and leading ambiguous, multi-disciplinary research projects and providing technical mentorship.
• Strong experimental and prototyping skills; Python and relevant AI/ML frameworks, including experience training, adapting, or evaluating models or agents; experience with systems software, security tooling, or large-scale data systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both AI researchers and security practitioners.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 224,000 USD - 356,500 USD for Level 5, and 272,000 USD - 431,250 USD for Level 6.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until October 26, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.