Artificial Intelligence Researcher

Location: Bengaluru

Company Description
SPARC (Security, Privacy and AI Research Centre) is a not-for-profit, mission-mode research organization at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore conducting frontier research at the intersection of AI and Security. One of SPARC's missions is Collective Intelligence — the development of foundational architectures, protocols, and governance mechanisms that enable autonomous agents to coordinate safely and effectively under uncertainty while complying with policies and maintaining trust.

Role Description
SPARC is seeking a Researcher in AI and multi-agent systems to advance foundational and applied research in distributed intelligence operating under uncertainty. The role focuses on developing principled models, algorithms, and evaluation methodologies for systems composed of multiple autonomous agents interacting in open and partially observable environments. The Researcher will independently scope and execute research problems while contributing to collaborative programs spanning simulation, benchmarking, and real-world pilots.

This role requires strong technical rigor, intellectual independence, and the ability to work closely with systems and security specialists to ensure that research translates into deployable infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities
The Researcher will develop novel approaches to multi-agent reasoning, distributed learning, sequential decision-making, and probabilistic inference in complex environments. They will design experimental frameworks to evaluate robustness, coordination quality, and system-level performance. The role includes publishing in leading AI venues or producing equivalent high-impact technical artifacts, contributing to shared research infrastructure, and participating in sector-focused pilots.

Qualifications
PhD in machine learning, AI, multi-agent systems, statistics, control theory, or a closely related field.
Publications in leading AI venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI, AAMAS, IJCAI, or comparable conferences. Publications in top-tier journals such as JMLR, JAIR, or IEEE TPAMI are also valued.
Demonstrate strong expertise in areas such as distributed learning, sequential decision-making under uncertainty, probabilistic inference, robustness in adversarial environments, or evaluation of open multi-agent systems.
Capability to work collaboratively in a team environment and manage multiple projects.