Principal Machine Learning Researcher

Our Mission

The security landscape is fundamentally broken. Billions of IoT and embedded devices operate with little to no protection. AI agents are rapidly entering production environments with no meaningful security model. The physical and digital worlds are merging — vehicles, medical devices, industrial systems, critical infrastructure — and security hasn't kept pace with a reality where a software vulnerability can have physical consequences and a physical breach can compromise entire digital ecosystems.

Traditional approaches can't keep up. Not at this scale, not at this speed, and not across this diversity of systems. We believe AI is the only way to solve cross-domain security challenges that span from the physical world to the digital one and everything in between.

We're building intelligent security systems that operate from the edge to the cloud — from runtime threat detection on resource-constrained devices to autonomous remediation driven by AI agents. This is not incremental improvement. This is rethinking how security works for a world where physical and digital threats are no longer separate problems.

We're looking for a Principal ML Researcher to define and lead this effort.

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Job Overview

You will own the machine learning research direction for the company.

This is a founding role: you'll shape the research agenda, build the team and culture around it, and ensure that what we develop translates into production systems used by real customers against real threats.

You'll operate at the intersection of fundamental research and applied security — designing models, running experiments, and driving technical strategy across teams.

You'll have a high degree of autonomy, a direct line to company leadership, and the mandate to push the boundaries of what ML can do for security.

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Responsibilities

• Define and lead the machine learning research roadmap aligned with company strategy and security priorities.
• Design, develop, and evaluate advanced ML/DL models for large-scale cybersecurity applications spanning edge, embedded, cloud, and agent-based environments.
• Drive innovation across novel algorithms, architectures, and learning paradigms — including adversarial ML, robust learning, and autonomous decision-making.
• Build and mentor a high-caliber ML research team over time.
• Establish best practices for experimental design, evaluation metrics, and reproducibility.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, security, and product leadership to translate research into scalable, deployable systems.
• Review and guide implementation of research papers, prototypes, and proof-of-concepts.
• Communicate complex research outcomes and trade-offs to executive and non-technical stakeholders.
• Represent the company externally through publications, conference talks, and industry collaborations.

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Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in applied ML research, with a strong track record of impact in production environments.
• Deep expertise in machine learning theory, statistical modeling, and optimization.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Python and ML/DL frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX).
• Proven ability to lead end-to-end research projects, from problem formulation to deployment.
• Strong experience with large-scale, complex, and noisy datasets.
• Comfort working across the full compute spectrum — from constrained edge devices to cloud-scale infrastructure.
• Solid understanding of cybersecurity challenges and threat models, or demonstrated ability to rapidly acquire deep domain expertise.
• Experience influencing technical strategy and decision-making at team or organizational level.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills in English.
• 8+ years of work experience with Machine Learning.

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Nice to Have

• PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, or a closely related field.
• Experience with embedded systems, IoT, or firmware-level security.
• Background in anomaly detection, binary analysis, behavioral modeling, or reinforcement learning for autonomous systems.

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Why Join Us?

• Tackle a generational problem. IoT is exploding, AI agents are entering production, and security hasn't caught up. You'll lead the ML effort to close that gap.
• Own the research direction. This is a founding research role with direct influence on long-term strategy, priorities, and team composition.
• Bridge research and production. Turn models and experiments into robust systems deployed against real-world threats — not just papers.
• Work across the full stack. From kernel-level telemetry on embedded devices to cloud-native agent orchestration — the problem space is deep and varied.
• High autonomy, high impact. In a fast-growing scale-up, your decisions will visibly shape product direction and company outcomes.

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Location

Remote

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Salary Range

€350K – €500K

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Inclusion Statement

Exein is committed to creating an inclusive workplace. We evaluate all applications fairly regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, background, or orientation.