Staff Scientist, Frontier AI Security & Privacy

Apply; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity's Secure Intelligence Institute (SII) seeks researchers and engineers to advance security, privacy, and trust in frontier AI systems. You will conduct rigorous, practical research to improve Perplexity's systems and contribute to the AI ecosystem.

You will develop threat models, analyze threats, and build defenses while collaborating with engineers and external researchers. Publish results and translate research into real-world security features for millions of users.

Qualifications

• PhD in CS/CE or related field with a focus on security/privacy.
• Record of publications at top security conferences (IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NDSS).
• Deep expertise in security of agentic systems, systems security, or web security.

Responsibilities

• Develop threat models for AI-native products including browser, search, and autonomous agents.
• Identify and analyze security/privacy threats across AI systems, infrastructure, and user-facing products.
• Develop defenses, mitigations, and detection mechanisms for security/privacy in AI-native products.
• Build security evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, and datasets to measure effectiveness of defenses.
• Collaborate with Security Engineering to translate research into shipped security features and hardened architectures.
• Collaborate with external researchers in SII's network.
• Publish findings at premier venues and contribute to the security research community.

Skills

Security research

Academic publishing

Python

Independent work

Technical communication

Education

PhD in Computer Science/Computer Engineering or related field

Job description

Perplexity's Secure Intelligence Institute (SII) seeks researchers and engineers to advance security, privacy, and trust in frontier AI systems. You will conduct rigorous, practical research to improve Perplexity's systems and contribute to the AI ecosystem.

You will develop threat models, analyze threats, and build defenses while collaborating with engineers and external researchers. Publish results and translate research into real-world security features for millions of users.