Senior AI/ML Research Engineer

About Nettitude

Founded in 2003, Nettitude is an award-winning global provider of cybersecurity services, bringing innovative thought leadership to the ever-evolving cybersecurity marketplace. Through our research and innovation centres, we provide threat led services that span technical assurance, consulting and managed detection and response offerings.

The Role

Would you like to advance the state of the art in applied artificial intelligence by leading Nettitude’s research in this field?

Nettitude recognises the critical importance of AI and ML technologies to companies that want to thrive in the modern world. Their use in a defensive cybersecurity context is now well-established, but their potential to assist with tasks such as penetration testing is largely untapped.

We wish to become a leader in this field, and to that end have been conducting early-stage research over the last 18 months to identify suitable technical opportunities, and experimentally demonstrate some of the techniques we would wish to utilise.

This project has now reached a stage where we wish to transition from proving concepts to developing working tools. To achieve this we are looking for an AI/ML specialist with both the research skills needed to work in unexplored territory, and the development skills needed to turn ideas into products.

If this sounds like you, then we’d love the opportunity for you to join our highly successful team and enable us to do just that. You’ll find yourself engaging in cutting edge cyber security capabilities with a high performing team of diverse and supportive peers.

Location

This role is remote and is open to applicants in the UK.

What you’ll be doing

As the lead researcher for our current and future AI/ML projects, you will be working within our Research & Innovation Department alongside other researchers and software developers.

• Determining how AI and ML techniques can be applied to cybersecurity-related problems, including in particular the task of penetration testing.
• Performing experiments to verify the utility of a technique prior to full implementation.
• Collecting and curating the data needed for training and validating models.
• Directing our regular software developers to translate the resulting technical specifications into production-quality software, or alternatively, writing parts of the software yourself where this is more expedient.
• Planning future AI/ML-based projects.
• Developing Nettitude’s capability to undertake work in this field.

To achieve these goals you will be supported by other staff who are skilled in the fields of cybersecurity and software development - but for artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are looking for someone who will become Nettitude’s subject matter expert and provide the technical leadership that we need.

Essential Skills

The essential skills for this role are in the field of AI and ML:

• Some experience of professional software development would desirable, but not essential.
• You are not expected to have any prior experience in the field of cybersecurity, only a willingness to learn.

Essential skills and experience include:

• A broad theoretical knowledge of established AI/ML techniques and algorithms, and the types of task to which they are suited.
• Sufficient mathematical knowledge to understand the method of operation of these algorithms, and to interpret experimental findings.
• Proven experience of applying and optimising AI/ML techniques and algorithms to meet the needs of specific practical problems.
• Most of our AI-related research and development is done using Python. We don’t consider knowledge of this specific language to be a prerequisite for the role, however if it is not one of your existing skills then it is something you should be prepared to learn.

Although this role is being advertised at the level of Senior Researcher, we are open to the possibility of appointing at the regular or Principal researcher level as appropriate to your skills.

What we offer

There are lots of good reasons to come and work for our research team here at Nettitude.

We focus on our people and on opportunities. It’s important to us that our people genuinely feel part of something important and that they have continuous opportunity to learn and develop. We always have bold plans that are expertly met, which simply wouldn’t be possible without our great team.

Specifically, every person who works with us can expect:

• To be a valued member of an inclusive, supportive and high performing team.
• To be part of an exciting environment that presents continuous intellectual challenges.
• The opportunity to attend conferences and training in an array of both technical and non-technical areas.
• The opportunity to mentor and to be mentored. Personal and technical growth is really important to us.
• Access to a wide array of tooling; both private and public; both free and commercial.
• Competitive and regularly reviewed remuneration.
• Career development opportunities in a multitude of directions and with our utmost support.

If you believe there’s a mutual fit then we’d love to hear from you.