Apollo Research · AI infrastructure
AI Security & Control Researcher
- London (On‑site), +1 more: San Francisco
- Full-time
- Competitive
AI roleMachine LearningTrains models
Still open on Apollo Research's site · checked 4 hours ago
- Posted
- Visa & relocation
- Apollo Research offers visa sponsorship for this job
- Apollo Research offers relocation support for this job
See all jobs with visa or relocation supportIn the job ad:
“Relocation support and visa fees (if applicable)”
“Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas in both the UK and US.”
“Sponsorship isn't guaranteed for every role or candidate, but if we make you an offer, we'll work with you to find the right visa route.”
AI Security & Control Researcher
Apollo Research
What you'll do
As written by Apollo Research · Read the original
THE OPPORTUNITY
Apollo Research works with most frontier AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Thinking Machines and others) to test their models before deployment and collaborate on fundamental scheming research. Our coding agent security product, Watcher, is deployed in production and monitors billions of agent tokens per month across engineering teams at agent-building scale-ups and enterprises.
We are looking for a security & control expert to help us design better threat models and control protocols against AI adversaries, and improve the effectiveness and security of Watcher.
This is truly a "start-up role" in the sense that you have significant say in shaping the direction of the role. This is an individual contributor role but could lead to management responsibilities eventually, if desired.
REPRESENTATIVE PROJECTS
-
Develop a comprehensive coding agent threat model: Think deeply about all the ways in which coding agents could attack an organization. Compare this threat model to conventional threats from human insiders. Publish a detailed research piece describing the threat model building on existing research, e.g. from Redwood Research.
-
Improve our database of failure modes: We have an internal database of 50+ failure modes of coding agents with detailed reports for all of them. For this project, you would provide an expert view on the current state of that database and suggest improvements. In the long run, you would maintain that database and be responsible for integration of new failures.
-
Prioritize failure modes that Watcher should cover: Different parts of Watcher attempt to cover different threat models and attack strategies. Based on the results of the threat model project above, we want to ensure that each part of Watcher covers the most important failure modes in the most efficient way. For example, not all monitors require blocking capability and some failure modes might benefit from additional affordances like being able to disperse subagents.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The product team consists of research scientists: Victor Gillioz, Monika Jotautaitė, Dmitrii Volkov; product engineers: Jeremy Neiman, Zak Walters, Zen van Riel, Srdjan Miletic and Gustavo Bicalho; and our GTM lead: Kyle Dai. Marius Hobbhahn (CEO) advises the team. Furthermore you will interact with our other SWEs and researchers, since we intend to be "our own customer" by using our products internally for our research work. You can find our full team here.
Requirements
Must-haves
Nice-to-haves
Experience with AI/ML systems security, LLM security, or AI control research. The field is young enough that deep experience here is rare, but any exposure significantly reduces ramp-up time.
Detection engineering, SOC, or incident analysis experience. A part of this role is judging whether flagged agent behavior is genuinely malicious, and people who have triaged real-world alerts might ramp much faster.
Familiarity with insider threat programs or insider risk frameworks. The mental model of "the coding agent is a potentially malicious insider" is useful for this role and someone who has worked on insider threats will pick it up faster.
Red teaming or offensive security background. Useful for the Watcher red-teaming responsibilities and for thinking adversarially about failure modes.
Formal AI safety research background. Helpful but not necessary. We need security practitioners who can learn the AI safety context, not AI safety researchers who need to learn security.
Explicitly not required
Management experience. This is an IC role, at least initially.
Specific certifications (CISSP, etc.). We care about demonstrated ability, not credentials.
Skills
Working languages
English
Salary & benefits
BENEFITS
- This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
- Salary: San Francisco: $204,000 – $385,000; London: £136,000 – £258,000. We will be looking to meaningfully raise salaries soon.
- Flexible work hours and schedule
- Unlimited vacation
- Unlimited sick leave
- Up to 6 months of paid parental leave
- Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance
- Retirement savings with competitive employer matching (e.g. 401(k) for US employees)
- Lunch, dinner, and snacks are provided for all employees on workdays
- Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences
- A yearly $1,000 (USD) professional development budget
- Relocation support and visa fees (if applicable)
Company
Last checked . The details above were extracted automatically; the employer's original posting is the authority.
