AI Security Researcher II

Overview

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end-to-end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft's mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers' heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Do you have research experience in AI security, adversarial machine learning, security for AI, and/or the study of agentic AI systems? Do you want to investigate how autonomous, tool-using, and multi-agent systems fail-and develop principled methods for evaluating and improving their security? Join Microsoft's AI Red Team research team, where you will help define the frontier of AI security research for agents.

We are looking for an AI Security Researcher II who can frame open research questions, design rigorous experiments, analyze emerging risks in agentic systems, and translate findings into techniques that improve the security of Microsoft's AI products. We are an interdisciplinary group of researchers, red teamers, and engineers focused on proactively understanding and reducing security risks in Microsoft's big bet AI systems. Your work will impact Microsoft's AI portfolio, including Phi series, Bing Copilot, Security Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Office Copilot, Windows Copilot and Azure OpenAI. We are open to remote work.

More about our approach to AI Red Teaming: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/08/07/microsoft-ai-red-team-building-future-of-safer-ai/

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Formulate and investigate research questions at the intersection of cybersecurity and agentic AI behavior, including security risks, failure modes, and adversarial behavior in agentic AI systems.
• Design rigorous experiments, evaluations, and benchmarks for autonomous, tool-using, and multi-agent systems.
• Analyze results and develop research insights, methodologies, and mitigations that advance the security of AI systems.
• Collaborate with researchers, red teamers, and product teams to translate AI security research into practical impact for Microsoft's AI products.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
• OR Masters Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field
• OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements: Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated research output in AI security, adversarial machine learning, agentic systems, LLM evaluation, or related areas, such as publications, preprints, technical reports, talks, open-source tools, or research artifacts
• Experience designing experiments, evaluations, benchmarks, or methodologies to study security-relevant behavior in AI systems, especially autonomous, tool-using, or multi-agent systems
• Ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary team environment
• Ability to connect research findings to practical security guidance, mitigations, or evaluation methods for real-world AI products

#MSFTSecurity #AI #AISecurity #Agents #AIResearch #RedTeam

Applied Sciences IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100 - $202,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $133,800 - $219,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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.