Early Career R&D AI Researcher, Onsite

Job Summary
:
Sandia National Laboratories is the nation’s premier science and engineering lab for national security and technology innovation, seeking researchers to work at the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. The role involves understanding threats to software and systems, contributing technical ideas and implementation, and engaging in various research areas related to AI/ML systems and cybersecurity.

Responsibilities
:

• Understand threats to software, algorithms, and systems in order to defend them.

• Contribute technical ideas and implementation.

• Engage in research areas including manual and automated reverse engineering, vulnerability research, and malware analysis.

• Develop, fine-tune, and secure AI/ML systems.

• Conduct network operations, information protection, and resilience strategies.

• Develop software tools.

• Implement authentication and authorization protocols.

• Analyze threat intelligence.

• Apply hardware/software trust and assurance methodologies.

• Work with virtualization and cloud technologies.

• Research autonomous systems.

Qualifications
:
Required
:

• A Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline, or an equivalent combination of directly relevant education and engineering or scientific experience that demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform independent research and development.

• Ability to obtain and maintain a DOE Q-level security clearance.

Preferred
:

• Graduate degree in a relevant computationally-intensive discipline where an independent research project was a graduation requirement (e.g., independent project, thesis, or dissertation).

• Experience in developing software and AI systems for enterprise and national security applications.

• Demonstrated software development skills and familiarity with modern software development practices.

• Proven ability to work and communicate effectively in a collaborative and interdisciplinary team environment.

• Graduate degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Data Science, Mathematics or related field.

• Software development and algorithm design skills in Rust, Go, C/C++, Java, Python, or Assembly.

• Strong foundational knowledge of neural networks and data science, with a demonstrated ability to attack and/or defend AI/ML models effectively.

• Experience in training and fine-tuning AI/ML models for various applications.

• Experience utilizing AI coding assistants, such as Claude Code or Open Code, to plan, design, and implement complex software solutions.

• Familiarity and experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP), tool-calling, and other agentic applications in AI system security.

• Experience applying large language models (LLMs) or AI technologies to address cybersecurity challenges.

• Understanding of security best practices and methodologies specific to AI/ML systems, including threat modeling and risk assessment.

• Ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate security measures throughout the AI development lifecycle.

• Professional, curricular, or extra-curricular experience in one or more of the following: reverse engineering, vulnerability assessments; malware analysis; software development.

• Experience auditing code in C/C++, Java, Python, assembly, or other languages.

• Experience with an assembly language (e.g., ARM, MIPS, Power

PC, 8051, x86, x64).

• Experience with static or dynamic analysis tools (Ghidra, IDA, GDB, Windbg, etc).

• Experience in data analysis on disparate datasets to find commonalities and anomalies.

• Familiarity with secure-system design principles or information assurance principles.

• Experience with research design and experimental rigor.

• Good oral and written communication skills, ability to explain complex ideas clearly and concisely.

• Ability to acquire an SCI clearance, which may require a polygraph test.

Company
:
Sandia is a conducts research and development into the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons. Founded in 1945, the company is headquartered in Albuquerque, USA, with a team of 10001+ employees. The company is currently Late Stage.