Senior Researcher - Security & AI

Overview Overview Microsoft Research India (MSR India) is a leading research lab advancing innovation across research areas like Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Theory, Technology & Empowerment, and Systems. The lab was established two decades ago and has been at the forefront of computer science research in India, home to world-class talent and projects. AI is rapidly changing both the systems we need to secure and the way security itself is practiced. AI systems increasingly interact with sensitive data, execute code, invoke tools, and take actions across complex environments, creating new security challenges. At the same time, advances in AI create opportunities to fundamentally rethink how we detect vulnerabilities, understand attacks, and build defences. Our team is pursuing an Growth-orientedresearch agenda at the intersection of security and AI, spanning both securing AI systems and using AI to advance security. Our research includes protecting sensitive data throughout AI pipelines, securing agentic and autonomous systems against new classes of attacks, developing principled defences for AI-enabled systems, and using AI to discover vulnerabilities, understand complex attack surfaces, and develop new security defences. As a Sr Researcher – Security and AI, you will push the state of the art in security for emerging AI systems. You will pursue long-term research problems while also having opportunities to translate research advances into systems deployed at Microsoft scale. You will work with researchers and engineers across MSR India, Microsoft Research worldwide, and Microsoft product groups, enabling your work to have impact both in the research community and on systems used by millions of users. We are looking for candidates who: Are passionate about advancing the state of the art in security, privacy, cryptography, systems, and AI Have a strong research track record, demonstrated through publications at top venues such as IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, NDSS, or other leading security, systems, cryptography, or machine learning venues Are excited about tackling emerging security problems created by AI and agentic systems Combine scientific rigor with strong systems thinking and the ability to turn research ideas into working prototypes Thrive in a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment Take end-to-end ownership of open-ended research problems Responsibilities Responsibilities Lead research at the intersection of security and AI, spanning both securing AI systems and applying AI to security problems. Develop new techniques to protect sensitive and proprietary data in AI systems and pipelines, including training, post-training, reinforcement learning, inference, and agentic workflows. Investigate the security of AI agents and autonomous systems, including attacks arising from tool use, code execution, memory, external data, multi-agent interaction, and long-running autonomous behavior, and develop principled defenses against them. Explore how AI can help address security problems, including discovering vulnerabilities and attack paths, understanding complex security environments, detecting attacks and anomalous behavior, and developing effective defenses. Investigate new attacks enabled or amplified by advances in AI and develop robust defenses against them. Design rigorous threat models, benchmarks, evaluations, and experimental methodologies for emerging AI security problems. Form hypotheses, build prototypes, design experiments, and evaluate new security mechanisms in realistic environments. Pursue long-term research while identifying opportunities to translate promising ideas into practical security mechanisms. Publish at top-tier security, systems, cryptography, and machine learning venues, release research artifacts where appropriate, and help shape the research agenda in security and AI. Collaborate with research and product teams across Microsoft to translate research advances into stronger security for real-world Microsoft systems. Mentor interns and entry level researchers and contribute to MSR India's broader academic and research engagement. Embody our culture and values. Qualifications Required Qualifications PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience. 1+ years of software engineering or research experience. Strong background in one or more areas of computer security, privacy, cryptography, computer systems, or machine learning. Strong research track record in security, cryptography, systems, machine learning, or a closely related area. Demonstrated ability to conduct independent research and communicate results through publications, prototypes, open-source artifacts, or other impactful outcomes. Ability to identify and formulate important research problems, develop novel technical approaches, and evaluate them rigorously. Ability to work effectively across disciplinary boundaries and collaborate with diverse research and engineering teams. Preferred Qualifications Research experience in AI security, security of LLMs, or security of agentic systems. Experience with security and privacy techniques for AI training, post-training, inference, or data pipelines. Experience in areas such as systems security, applied cryptography, privacy-enhancing technologies, confidential computing, access control, or secure machine learning. Experience studying adversarial behavior, software vulnerabilities, attack surfaces, or security of large-scale systems. Experience applying LLMs or other AI techniques to security problems such as vulnerability discovery, security analysis, attack detection, or defense generation. Experience building and evaluating large-scale security or AI systems. Experience designing threat models, security benchmarks, adversarial evaluations, or red-team methodologies for emerging systems. Experience working across the research-to-production boundary and translating research ideas into real-world systems. How to Apply Please apply using the link above. In addition, please send an email to the Hiring Committee at seas-hiring-msri@microsoft.com. This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.