Staff AI Security Scientist

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.; Washington; Hybrid; USD 235,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Wellness programs

Vacations & holidays

Parental leave

Professional development

Employee networks

Office culture

Great Place to Work

Job summary

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is seeking an applied research lead to drive agentic AI initiatives across cybersecurity use cases. You will set the scientific direction, lead experiments, and advance post-training techniques for efficient security models.

The role requires a MS/PhD in a quantitative field, 10+ years in data science/ML/DL/AI, and proven leadership in research on agentic systems. You will collaborate with security teams to ensure rigorous evaluation and responsible deployment.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in computer science, computer engineering, or similar quantitative field.

Responsibilities

• Lead the research agenda for agentic AI systems across cybersecurity use cases.
• Set scientific direction, shape research bets, and run experiments with the team.
• Drive original research on efficient models tuned for security workflows and data curation strategies.
• Personally lead the experimental work on the most ambiguous problems.
• Establish a rigorous evaluation, verification, and validation methodology for models and end-to-end systems.
• Partner with security researchers, threat intel, detection engineering, and product teams to ground research in workflows.
• Define abstractions for skills and tools agents use, grounded in practical execution.

Skills

Data science

ML/DL

AI

Research leadership

Evaluation methodology

Education

MS/PhD in CS/CE

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 frontier of cybersecurity is being reimagined by AI, and the defenders who win the next decade will be the ones who leverage agents that actually work in the constraints of the environment. We're looking for an applied research lead to take on both sides (offensive and defensive) of this frontier and help turn it into products. In this role, you'll set the scientific direction for our agentic AI work and lead the research behind the next generation of security products. The problems span the full stack: post-training small, efficient models; designing and tuning the harnesses; and developing the evaluation and verification methodologies that give us rigor around if the agents are actually doing what we built them to do. These are open research problems, and we expect the person in this seat to advance the state of the art on them. This is a player/coach role in the truest sense. The successful candidate will bring technical credibility, instincts sharpened by doing the work, and leads by raising the bar on what the team believes is possible.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the research agenda for agentic AI systems that operate autonomously across cybersecurity use cases.
• Set scientific direction, shaping the team’s research bets and staying close enough to the work to run experiments, review results, and dig into hard problems alongside the team.
• Drive original research on efficient models tuned for security workflows, including methods in post-training, reward modeling, and data curation strategies that enable them.
• Personally lead the experimental work on the most ambiguous problems.
• Establish a rigorous evaluation, verification, and validation methodology covering models, data, agent designs, and end-to-end systems. This includes current and new benchmarks, adversarial evaluation protocols, and measurement practices that others in the field will adopt.
• Partner closely with security researchers, threat intel, detection engineering, and product to ground applied research in real operator workflows and adversarial conditions.
• Define principled abstractions for the skills and tools agents use, grounded in practical ways that security agents execute.
• Advance the science of agent design, including harnesses, scaffolding, planning, memory, tool use, and multi-step reasoning.
• Contribute novel techniques back to the field through publications and standards.

What You’ll Need

• MS or PhD in computer science, computer engineering, or similar quantitative field.
• 10+ years of experience in data science, ML/DL, or AI with a focus on large-scale data problems.
• Hands-on expertise in modern LLM post-training techniques.
• Demonstrated research contributions to or experience building agentic systems.
• Strong evaluation discipline (designing, extending, or validating methodologies).
• A leadership style that values hands-on contributions at every level, including your own.

Bonus Points

• Hands-on background in offensive security, detection engineering, incident response, or threat intelligence applied research.
• Experience designing RL environments and synthetic data pipelines for agent tuning.
• Experience navigating regulatory, compliance, or audit conversations about AI systems, especially translating research into responsible deployment.
• History of mentoring and growing researchers in the security domain.

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.

Find out more about your rights as an applicant.

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 $235,000 - $350,000 per year, with eligibility for bonuses, equity grants and a comprehensive benefits package that includes health insurance, 401k and paid time off.

Expected Close Date of Job Posting is:10-14-2026

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 to fix a fundamental problem: The sophisticated attacks that were forcing the world’s leading businesses into the headlines could not be solved with existing malware-based defenses. Founder George Kurtz realized that a brand new approach was needed - one that combines the most advanced endpoint protection with expert intelligence to pinpoint the adversaries perpetrating the attacks, not just the malware. There’s much more to the story of how Falcon has redefined endpoint protection but there’s only one thing to remember about CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.