Senior AI Security Researcher

AppViewX is the only machine and agent identity security company built for the AI and quantum era, bringing together discovery, automation, control, and intelligence. The AVX Platform helps enterprises reduce risk by providing complete visibility and governance over every machine and AI agent identity, automating their lifecycle, controlling their access, and proving compliance at the speed business demands. Trusted by global enterprises across financial services, healthcare, and technology, AppViewX is recognized as a leader in the IDC 2026 MarketScape for Certificate Lifecycle Management and KuppingerCole’s 2025 Non-Human Identity Management Leadership Compass. For more information, users can visit appviewx.com.

Our Values:Our values define how we work, make decisions, and deliver for our customers and each other. Some reflect strengths deeply engrained in how we work. Others represent the standards we are committed to building together.We Do What We Say: We own our commitments, communicate honestly about progress, and measure success by results, not activity.We Are Trusted Experts: We continuously build our expertise, offer candid guidance, and focus on the outcomes our customers and colleagues need.We Raise the Bar: We stay curious, challenge the status quo, take smart risks, and turn better ideas into meaningful results.We Win Together: We share information, debate openly, commit together, and recognize that our success is connected to the success of our customers and teammates.If these values reflect how you want to work and contribute, you will find an opportunity to make a meaningful impact at AppViewX.

Role OverviewWe are looking for an experienced AI Security Researcher to lead deep technical research for the Agent Identity Security (AIS) platform.This research-focused role continuously explores the evolving AI and Agentic AI security landscape and translates findings into actionable security intelligence, prototypes, technical recommendations, and thought leadership for AIS.The researcher will focus on AI agents, Agentic AI frameworks, MCP and emerging agent protocols, LLM security, AI identity, tool security, AI supply-chain risks, prompt and context security, and AI governance standards. The role will also continuously evaluate competitive products and emerging technologies to identify new threats, capabilities, and opportunities relevant to AIS.A critical responsibility of this position is to serve as an independent security research function for AIS, continuously challenging the platform architecture, integrations, gateways, policy enforcement mechanisms, and agent interactions to ensure AIS remains secure as the AI ecosystem evolves.The ideal candidate combines a strong security research mindset with hands-on technical ability and can move from research → threat hypothesis → experimentation → PoC → security recommendation → product influence → publication.

What will you be responsible for?Lead research on emerging threats across LLMs, AI agents, Agentic AI platforms, MCP, AI tools, models, gateways, and development environments.Analyze AI attack vectors including prompt injection, tool compromise, privilege escalation, data exposure, identity abuse, agent impersonation, and cross-agent attacks.Research AI identity security, authentication, authorization, delegation, non-human identities, and trust relationships between agents, tools, models, and MCP services.Evaluate emerging AI protocols, standards, and interoperability frameworks such as MCP, A2A, and agent communication protocols.Develop proofs of concept, attack simulations, and security experiments to validate risks, controls, and AIS capabilities.Perform adversarial testing of AI agents, tools, models, gateways, and AIS components to identify vulnerabilities and improve platform resilience.Translate research findings into actionable security recommendations, posture checks, detections, policies, controls, and product enhancements.Conduct competitive and market research across AI security, identity security, governance, cloud security, and Agentic AI ecosystems.Track evolving threats, vulnerabilities, academic research, open-source projects, and industry developments relevant to AI security.Evaluate and apply AI security standards and frameworks, including OWASP, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and emerging governance models.Develop threat models, attack taxonomies, and security frameworks for agents, tools, models, MCP ecosystems, RAG pipelines, and autonomous workflows.Author white papers, technical content, research reports, and thought leadership to advance AIS and industry understanding of AI security.Partner with engineering, product, security teams, customers, and external communities to drive AIS innovation and security strategy.

What do we require? 4+ years of cybersecurity experience, with significant experience in security research, application security, cloud security, offensive security, identity security, vulnerability research, or related disciplines.Experience in AI/ML, LLM, Agentic AI, application, identity, or emerging security research.Strong understanding of AI agents, Agentic AI frameworks, LLMs, RAG, AI gateways, model APIs, memory, and context management.Hands-on experience with MCP and emerging agent protocols, including building integrations, security PoCs, and attack simulations.Knowledge of AI attack techniques such as prompt injection, tool poisoning, privilege escalation, data exfiltration, supply-chain risks, and memory manipulation.Strong foundation in identity and access security, including OAuth/OIDC, IAM, API security, workload identities, RBAC/ABAC, secrets, and zero-trust architectures.Proficiency in Python and the ability to rapidly develop research tools, automation, and proof-of-concept implementations.Experience with security testing across web applications, APIs, cloud platforms, containers, and distributed systems.Familiarity with leading AI platforms and ecosystems, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, and agentic development tools.Knowledge of security frameworks and standards such as OWASP, MITRE ATT&CK/ATLAS, NIST AI RMF, and ISO/IEC 42001.Ability to analyze research papers, standards, protocols, open-source projects, and security advisories and translate findings into product insights.Strong technical writing and communication skills, including research reports, white papers, threat models, and thought leadership.Experience conducting competitive analysis and influencing product and engineering roadmaps.Demonstrated ability to independently formulate hypotheses, design experiments, validate findings, and solve ambiguous security challenges.Published research, CVEs, responsible disclosures, conference presentations, patents, open-source contributions, or standards participation is highly preferred.

Expected Research OutcomesWe will measure success primarily by research impact rather than feature delivery. Expected outcomes include:Identification of new AI and Agentic AI attack techniques relevant to AIS.Research-backed recommendations that improve the security architecture of AIS.Working PoCs for emerging AI protocols, threats, and defensive techniques.New security posture checks, policies, detections, or controls proposed from validated research.Regular competitive intelligence identifying technical gaps and differentiation opportunities.High-quality white papers, technical publications, threat models, and research reports.Identification and responsible remediation of security weaknesses within AIS.Contributions to industry discussions, standards, open-source initiatives, patents, or original security research.A continuously maintained AIS AI Security Research Roadmap covering emerging protocols, threats, standards, competitors, and research priorities.