AI Lead at protocolnine.com (San Jose, CA)AI Lead

AI Lead (Small Language Models + Cybersecurity) Location: San Francisco Bay Area (preferred) / Remote Company: Protocol Nine

We are looking for an AI Lead to build the core intelligence layer of an AI-native security platform. This role sits at the intersection of small language model (SLM) development, agentic systems, and cybersecurity, and will define how models reason about intent, risk, and behavior in real-world environments.

You will lead the design, training, and deployment of specialized models that operate in constrained, high-performance environments (e.g., edge, real-time inference), and apply them to security problems such as threat detection, policy enforcement, and autonomous decision-making.

Design & Train Small Language Models (SLMs)

• - Build domain-specific models optimized for latency, cost, and controllability
• Fine-tune models on security datasets (logs, network traffic, code, policies)
• Develop techniques for distillation, quantization, and efficient inference

Build AI-Native Security Systems

• - Architect models that reason about intent in security contexts

Develop detection systems for threats across:

• - - Network traffic
• Application behavior
• Integrate models into real-time decision pipelines (e.g., firewall, policy engine)

Agentic AI & Decision Systems

• - Design multi-agent systems for continuous monitoring, analysis, and response
• Implement feedback loops between detection, reasoning, and enforcement layers
• Ensure reliability, explainability, and controllability of autonomous systems

Model Infrastructure & Deployment

• - Optimize models for edge + distributed environments
• Build evaluation frameworks for adversarial robustness and false positives
• Work closely with engineering to productionize models (APIs, pipelines, scaling)

Security Research & Innovation

• - Stay ahead of emerging threats (e.g., AI-generated attacks, supply chain risks)
• Experiment with novel approaches (e.g., semantic code analysis, intent verification)
• Contribute to technical strategy and product direction

Core Requirements 5+ years in machine learning / AI engineering (or equivalent depth) Hands-on experience training or fine-tuning small or specialized language models Strong understanding of:

• - Transformer architectures
• Model optimization (quantization, pruning, distillation)
• Evaluation and benchmarking

Cybersecurity Experience Experience in at least one area:

• - Network security / firewalls
• Endpoint or cloud security
• Application security or code analysis

Familiarity with:

• - Threat detection systems
• Logs, telemetry, and security data pipelines
• Adversarial attack vectors

Systems & Engineering

• Strong programming skills (Python + ML frameworks like PyTorch/JAX)
• Experience deploying models in production environments
• Understanding of distributed systems and real-time inference constraints

• Familiarity with agent frameworks / multi-agent systems
• Contributions to open-source ML or security projects

• Competitive salary + equity
• Early-stage ownership and high impact
• Opportunity to define a new category in security