Staff Software Security Engineer, Security Labs (Applied Cryptography and Verification)
AI research and safety company building large AI systems, with an internal security research team
| Employer | AI research and safety company building large AI systems, with an internal security research team (not named) |
|---|---|
| Location | San Francisco, CA (Bay Area) · Hybrid |
| Type & level | Full-time · Staff |
| Pay | USD 320k–485k base Source: pay range stated in the source posting |
| Visa path | O-1A fit (senior candidates) |
| Role family | Applied Cryptographer (Post-Quantum / ZK) |
About the role
This role sits on a small security research team that runs short, high-risk projects to find new ways of protecting frontier AI systems from well-resourced attackers. Projects last weeks rather than quarters and end either in a hand-off to the team that will own the work in production or in a documented wind-down. Current bets include provable inference using zero-knowledge proofs and attestation, extreme-isolation research clusters, and formally verified compilation.
What you'll do
- Own security research projects end to end: scope the bet, build a prototype, test it against real workloads, and bring it to a hand-off or a documented exit.
- Stand up experimental security infrastructure quickly, such as isolated clusters, attestation chains, hypervisor and runtime tooling, and verification tools.
- Find the team that will receive each project early and bring them along so they want to own the result.
- Work alongside research and infrastructure teams (training, reinforcement learning, inference, compute) to test whether their workflows survive the proposed controls, and record where they fail.
- Write short, actionable reports that shape long-term security architecture, plus costed contingency plans that could be executed on short notice.
- Help choose the next round of projects and push the wider industry toward stronger security practice.
Requirements
- Real depth in at least one specialized area, such as applied cryptography, firmware or hardware security, kernel or hypervisor internals, formal methods, reverse engineering, or high-assurance systems.
- A record of building and shipping work on your own initiative, for example founding a company or research group, maintaining a widely used open-source project, or publishing research that changed practice.
- Strong programming in Python plus at least one of Rust, Go, or C/C++, and the ability to stand up real infrastructure.
- Experience running experiments meant to answer hard questions, including ones that did not work out, and comfort moving between layers of the stack.
- Clear writing that turns weeks of work into a couple of pages someone can act on.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience, with experience matched to the staff level.
Nice to have
- Experience in airgapped or high-side environments such as classified networks, cross-domain solutions, ICS/SCADA, or financial trading infrastructure.
- Background in offensive security, red teaming, or vulnerability research.
- Familiarity with ML infrastructure, including training pipelines, distributed schedulers, inference serving, and accelerator hardware.
- History of working in fast-iteration settings such as startups, applied research groups, independent consulting, or small security shops.
Pay & benefits
USD 320k–485k base. The posting does not list benefits beyond the salary range. It states a location-based hybrid policy with staff expected in an office at least 25 percent of the time.
Pay source: pay range stated in the source posting. Market data, not an offer from O1DMatch.
Visa path
People in staff-level applied cryptography and security research roles typically support an O-1A case with published research, open-source work others depend on, citations or conference talks, expert judging or peer review, and evidence of high compensation or a critical role at a distinguished organization. The posting states no citizenship restriction in the text provided, though the visa sponsorship section is cut off. An employer like this or a U.S. agent can file an O-1A petition, but approval depends on the individual's evidence and is never assured.
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