Principal Applied AI Researcher (Prisma AIRS)
About The Position
As a Principal Applied AI Researcher on the Prisma AIRS Runtime Security team, you will serve as a technical visionary and strategic leader shaping the future of AI security. You will partner with executive leadership, product management, UX designers, ML engineers, and cross-functional engineering teams to conceptualize, architect, and deliver enterprise-grade, cutting-edge AI detection and protection solutions for the Prisma AIRS Runtime Security product. You will be at the vanguard of innovation for an industry-defining product in the rapidly evolving space of AI Runtime Security. Your responsibilities will transcend standard model development to lead continuous accuracy, latency, and efficiency optimizations, enabling high-throughput integrations across AI threat detection infrastructure, real-time guardrail pipelines, and partner engineering teams. You will drive technical excellence across the organization, set architectural and research standards, and act as a force multiplier by mentoring other researchers and engineers on the team.
Requirements
- 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years experience; or equivalent experience.
- Mastery of modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and extensive hands-on experience with modern architectures (Transformers, LLMs).
- Proven experience with the modern LLM stack and a strong understanding of LLM guardrails and alignment techniques.
- Demonstrated history of successfully transitioning complex AI research or prototypes into high-throughput, low-latency production systems at scale.
- Advanced skills in Python and standard software engineering workflows, with experience deploying models using high-performance inference servers such as vLLM or Triton.
- Exceptional ability to distill complex statistical and architectural concepts for non-technical stakeholders and partner effectively with cross-functional executive leadership.
Responsibilities
- Lead cross-functional collaboration with Product Management, ML, and Quality Engineering teams to deliver new, enterprise-grade AI security-as-a-service offerings in a timely, predictable fashion.
- Tackle complex, ambiguous technical challenges across system boundaries, translating high-level product and security vision into resilient, production-ready AI detection models and backend architectures.
- Design and select optimal AI architectures—from lightweight ML baselines to complex Transformers—to solve high-impact runtime security challenges.
- Train, fine-tune, and align domain-specific foundation models using modern techniques (PEFT, LoRA, DPO) and distributed training frameworks.
- Build scalable pipelines to filter, clean, and generate high-quality synthetic datasets for model training workflows.
- Develop automated benchmarks, LLM-as-a-judge evaluations, and real-time pipelines to monitor model accuracy, and drift in production.
- Develop models using techniques to minimize compute costs and meet strict, low-latency performance targets.
- Architect scalable model-serving infrastructure using high-throughput engines (vLLM, Triton) integrated into enterprise backend services.
- Mentor senior and junior engineers and researchers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, algorithmic rigor, and continuous learning within the team.
Benefits
- The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
