---
title: 'Engineering Fellowship at 10a Labs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-fellowship-10a-labs-washington-wbmbw76nj2h5'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-15'
---

# Engineering Fellowship at 10a Labs

- **Company:** 10a Labs
- **Location:** Washington, DC
- **Posted:** 2026-03-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/10alabs/jobs/4203095009

## Job description

About 10a Labs: 10a Labs is the safety and threat-intelligence layer trusted by frontier AI labs, AI unicorns, Fortune 10 companies, and leading global technology platforms. Our adversarial red teaming, model evaluations, and intelligence collection enable engineering, safety, and security teams to stay ahead of evolving threats and deploy AI systems safely.

About the role: As an Engineering Fellow, you will apply your technical skills to support high-impact research problems. Fellows will contribute across the project lifecycle — from processing diverse data sources and designing dynamic visualizations, to deploying sophisticated models and building cloud infrastructure. This is a hands-on role at the intersection of applied research and practical engineering, with opportunities to explore novel methods, test ideas quickly, and generate insights.

Fellows specialize in one of three concentrations based on interest and past experience: Software Engineering, Data Engineering, or Machine Learning.

In this role, you will:

- Collaborate with engineers on real projects, including client-facing products and in-house tooling;
- Assist with researching experiment design and automation, particularly as it relates to abuse detection or red teaming of AI systems;
- Ideate / brainstorm new research approaches to known and novel problems in the Trust & Safety and AI Security fields; and
- Support other critical initiatives.

Software Engineering concentration responsibilities may include:

- Implementing cloud infrastructure for deploying machine learning models;
- Writing high-coverage test suites for complex codebases; and
- Guiding project development with software engineering best practices, including version control, continuous integration, and design patterns.

Data Engineering concentration responsibilities may include:

- Sourcing, curating, and processing diverse data sources across domains and modalities, including automated collection of internet-scale datasets;
- Designing data architecture schemata, implementing with production-grade data storage tools, and interfacing via custom APIs; and
- Developing front-end dashboards and other visualizations.

Machine Learning concentration responsibilities may include:

- Training, validating, evaluating, and deploying cutting-edge machine learning algorithms including classifiers, LLMs, and computer vision models;
- Building agentic systems for automated prompting, red-teaming, research, and rapid experimentation;
- Supporting projects with specialized knowledge of frontier model architectures and cutting-edge technology.

We’re looking for someone who:

- Brings curiosity and creativity to ambiguous research problems, with a bias toward experimentation and rapid iteration;
- Thrives in collaborative, interdisciplinary environments; is resourceful, proactive, and adaptable;
- Is comfortable communicating technical ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences; and
- Is excited about contributing to real-world applications and exploring new methods that push beyond standard benchmarks.

Requirements:

- Strong academic background and quantitative foundation demonstrated through applied coursework, research, or hands-on-experience
- Strong Python background
- Clear communicator of technical concepts for non-technical audiences

Nice to have:

- Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform (or similar), including storage and database services (e.g., Cloud Storage, CloudSQL, Cloud Spanner), workflow orchestration (e.g., Cloud Composer/Airflow, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub), and ML services (e.g., Vertex AI, Compute Engine)
- Experience managing full lifecycle projects from design to deployment

Software Engineering:

-

- Experience designing and building end-to-end backend systems, from architecture and data modeling to deployment, scaling, and monitoring
- Proficiency in backend programming languages such as Python, Java, Kotlin, Node.js, or Go and experience building secure systems, APIs, and microservices
- Knowledge of security best practices, including authentication methods (OAuth, JWT), encryption, and secure API development; knowledge of common attack vectors (SQL injection, privilege escalation, DDoS) and effective mitigation strategies

Data Engineering:

-

- Experience with web scraping/crawling (e.g., Beautiful Soup, Selenium, Scrapy)

Machine Learning Engineering:

-

- Computer vision skills (OCR, image classification, deep fake detection)
- Familiarity with multimodal learning (text-image or text-audio) or cross-domain model evaluation
- Exposure to MLOps tools and practices (Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD for ML, MLflow, etc.)
- Understanding of modern retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI agent frameworks, and context-aware orchestration (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI Agents, or AutoGen) for building intelligent applications

Benefits:

- Flexible start / end dates
- Remote work (based in the continental U.S.)
- Flexible schedule, up to 20 hours per week (negotiable)
- Hourly pay commensurate with experience and qualifications
- $30 per hour for undergraduate students
- $35 per hour for graduate students
- $50 per hour for advanced PhD students
- $60 per hour for postdocs or non-tenured positions
- $125 per hour for tenure-track academics

## About 10a Labs

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: 10a Labs is an applied research and technology company providing AI security, threat intelligence, and independent safety evaluations for frontier AI models and major technology platforms.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Privately Held)
- **Headquarters**: Washington, D.C., United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Bobby McKenzie (Founder & CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI Security & Safety, Threat Intelligence, Research Services
- **Target customers**: Frontier AI labs, AI unicorns, Fortune 10 companies, and leading global technology platforms (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "The safety and threat-intelligence layer trusted by frontier AI labs... enabling engineering, safety, and security teams to stay ahead of evolving threats and deploy AI systems safely."

## Products & Services
- **Model Evaluations & Red Teaming**: Independent safety evaluations for frontier AI models, built for EU AI Act compliance and regulatory readiness. Includes scaled red teaming technology stress-testing generative and agentic AI systems against high-priority threats (CBRNE, Cyber Harms, Data Exfiltration, Model Distillation, Terrorism, Fraud, and more).
- **Threat Intelligence (Scout)**: Real-time monitoring for emerging threats to frontier AI systems, with proprietary threat intelligence delivered via API. Covers malicious tooling, novel abuse patterns, unauthorized access pathways, credential resale, jailbreaks, and dark web monitoring.
- **Model Defense & Integrity (Spartan)**: Advanced R&D in agentic AI systems, ML and RL model-distillation risks, and multimodal adversarial defenses to strengthen AI security and robustness.
- **Data Center Risk Analysis**: Assessment of risks to data centers stemming from geopolitical, regulatory, jurisdictional, and operational challenges.
- **Classification System**: A proprietary production ML pipeline with datasets and taxonomies informed by deep subject-matter expertise to detect emerging abuse patterns across text and other modalities.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total headcount of approximately 36 employees (as of mid-2025), with strong growth (+172.2% year-over-year).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Clients include frontier AI labs, AI unicorns, Fortune 10 companies, and leading global technology platforms. Alumni have gone on to OpenAI, Microsoft, Verizon, and other tech leaders. Talent sourced from organizations like the U.S. Department of State, Columbia SIPA, and the United Nations University.
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid headcount growth (+172.2% YoY), 32 active job postings in mid-2025, quarterly job posting growth of +166.7% and yearly growth of +3100.0%, indicating aggressive expansion across multiple departments (Research, Engineering, Threat Investigation, Data, Operations).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Specialized Focus**: A rare company fully dedicated to AI safety, security, and threat intelligence for frontier models, serving as an independent, expert safety layer.
- **Deep Expertise**: Combines subject-matter expertise (e.g., CBRNE, cyber, terrorism) with proprietary ML pipelines and red teaming technology.
- **Trusted Client Base**: Serves the most advanced AI labs and largest tech platforms, providing a unique vantage point on emerging threats.
- **Regulatory Readiness**: Built to help clients comply with frameworks like the EU AI Act, positioning them as a critical partner in the evolving regulatory landscape.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling the Team**: Aggressively hiring across engineering, research, threat investigation, and operations to expand capacity.
- **Advancing R&D**: Deepening research into agentic AI risks, model distillation, and multimodal adversarial defenses.
- **Global Expansion**: Posting roles in multiple regions (US, UK, Australia, France), indicating international growth.
- **Product Development**: Continuing to build out their suite of safety, intelligence, and evaluation products (Scout, Spartan, Classification System).

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact Mission**: Work directly on ensuring the safe deployment of the world's most advanced AI systems, addressing critical security and societal risks.
- **Compelling Compensation**: Salary ranges for technical roles are highly competitive (e.g., $255K–$405K + Equity for exceptional engineers, per a recent hiring post).
- **Rapid Growth Environment**: Join a company in a strong growth phase (+172% headcount growth), offering significant opportunities for impact and career advancement.
- **On-Site Collaborative Culture**: While some roles are remote, many positions are in-office (Washington D.C., San Francisco, London), emphasizing a collaborative, hands-on work environment.
- **Strong Talent Network**: Surrounded by colleagues from top institutions and government agencies (State Department, UN, Columbia SIPA, Michigan State), fostering a culture of expertise and mission-driven work.
- **Comprehensive Roles**: Opportunities span from hands-on red teaming and software engineering to research and operations, appealing to a wide range of skills and career paths.

## Sources
1. [10alabs.com](https://10alabs.com/)
2. [Built In - 10a Labs](https://builtin.com/company/10a-labs)
3. [LinkedIn - 10a Labs](https://www.linkedin.com/company/10a-labs)
4. [Greenhouse - 10a Labs Jobs](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/10alabs)

## Other roles at 10a Labs

- [Software Engineer, Infrastructure & Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-infrastructure-platform-10a-labs-remote-z8rew4b9a2pr)
- [Cybersecurity Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/cybersecurity-engineer-10a-labs-remote-6tw6ebfp1kh6)
- [Finance Manager - Accounting & FP&A](https://feeny.ai/job/finance-manager-accounting-fp-a-10a-labs-remote-ha9bssj2nhaa)
- [Junior Cyber Investigator](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-cyber-investigator-10a-labs-washington-tznv7eqs48aj) — Washington, DC
- [Senior Cyber Investigator](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-cyber-investigator-10a-labs-washington-a46kb0vdtmz9) — Washington, DC
- [Red Teaming Fellowship](https://feeny.ai/job/red-teaming-fellowship-10a-labs-washington-7rdm2an2hcxd) — Washington, DC
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-10a-labs-remote-46rkedcxxrca)
- [AI Red Teamer, Cyber](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-red-teamer-cyber-10a-labs-washington-qhn95a7zsf7h) — Washington, DC
- [Threat Investigator - APAC](https://feeny.ai/job/threat-investigator-apac-10a-labs-sydney-hv40zapq3bsx) — Sydney, Australia
- [Threat Investigator - EMEA](https://feeny.ai/job/threat-investigator-emea-10a-labs-london-ynep2ctvnbq8) — London, United Kingdom