Research Scientist, AI and Systems Security - PhD New College Grad 2026

NVIDIA•Westford, MA

About The Position

NVIDIA is hiring a Research Scientist to advance security, safety, and privacy across three complementary research areas: security of AI models and systems; AI-enabled design and verification of secure computer systems; and AI for cybersecurity. The role focuses on building secure, safe, and private systems from first principles by co-designing hardware, software, AI models, algorithms, and operational controls, while pursuing strong, measurable—and where possible verifiable—protection without sacrificing performance, energy efficiency, or usability. The position offers the opportunity to shape the security and safety foundations of emerging AI platforms, develop approaches for AI-enabled secure system design and verification, and advance AI-powered cybersecurity in collaboration with research, product, and engineering teams. Candidates may bring depth in one research area and contribute across the broader agenda. The successful candidate will conduct original research, build and evaluate systems, collaborate across disciplines, publish research, and help translate advances into practical systems and developer capabilities.

Requirements

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
Strong research background in security, AI/ML, computer architecture, operating systems, formal methods, programming languages and compilers, software systems, or a related area.
Research excellence demonstrated through publications, open-source systems, patents, technology transfer, or substantial research collaborations.
Deep expertise in at least one of the following: security of AI models and systems; AI-enabled design and verification of secure computer systems; or AI for cybersecurity.
Ability to connect expertise to challenges across the hardware and software stack.
Strong experimental research and prototyping skills, including building systems, defining threat models, designing meaningful evaluations, and analyzing security and performance tradeoffs.
Strong programming skills in C, C++, Python, and/or relevant systems and machine-learning frameworks.
Clear written and verbal communication skills.
Creative, collaborative, and self-directed approach, with interest in working across disciplines.

Responsibilities

Advance the security, safety, and privacy of AI models and systems throughout their lifecycle, including data collection, training, model and agent behavior, inference, deployment, and platform operations.
Develop AI-enabled methods to design, analyze, implement, and verify computer systems, including hardware architectures, system software, runtimes, compilers, and applications.
Rigorously evaluate security, safety, and privacy alongside performance and efficiency tradeoffs.
Develop AI-for-cybersecurity techniques for vulnerability discovery, secure code generation and review, threat detection, incident analysis, security validation, and automated defense.
Collaborate with hardware, software, research, and product teams.
Publish original research and help translate research advances into practical systems and developer capabilities.