---
title: 'Research Scientist at Persona'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-persona-san-francisco-9gkya508jj9k'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-28'
---

# Research Scientist at Persona

- **Company:** Persona
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-28
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/persona/6069ae62-74ea-4d48-8832-2863dbc27805

## Job description

## About Persona

[Persona](https://withpersona.com/) is the configurable identity platform built for businesses in a digital-first world. Verifying individuals and organizations is harder — but more important — than ever, with AI enabling fraudsters to launch sophisticated accounts at scale and regulations evolving rapidly. We’ve built Persona to support practically every use case and industry — that’s why we’re able to serve a wide range of leading companies. For example, Reddit relies on Persona for age assurance and verification to comply with online safety regulations, protecting younger users while maintaining a seamless experience. Meanwhile, OpenAI relies on Persona to keep bad actors out, protecting one of the world’s most powerful AI platforms from large-scale abuse in a time when AI is reshaping the way we work and live. We’re growing rapidly and looking for exceptional people to join us!

## About the role

Proving who someone is online has never been harder or more important. You'll research how to detect fraud and verify identities more accurately. Your work will include detecting AI-generated and manipulated images, understanding how models perform across populations, and finding patterns in how attackers behave. You bring depth in at least one of computer vision, mathematics and statistics, or identity verification and fraud prevention. You test ideas with focused experiments and follow what the results show. You'll work with our ML and engineering teams to turn your findings into defenses for real customers, and you'll get to publish your work.

## What you’ll do at Persona

- Lead research on open problems in identity verification and fraud prevention, using focused experiments to test new ideas quickly.
- Develop methods to detect manipulated documents, AI-generated images and emerging fraud attacks.
- Evaluate how reliably our models perform across different populations
- Uncover the patterns in verification data that reveal fraud, and prove they're real signal and not noise.
- Calibrate model confidence and measure fraud events with limited labeled data.
- Partner with ML and engineering to turn research prototypes into production models.
- Publish at top venues such as CVPR, NeurIPS and USENIX Security, and stay active in the research community.

## What you’ll bring to Persona

- Deep expertise in one of the following:
- Computer vision: research in image forensics, face analysis, generative models or representation learning.
- Mathematics and statistics: strong foundation in areas such as probability, statistical inference, optimization, or applied mathematics, with experience applying it to empirical research.
- Identity or fraud prevention: Experience researching identity verification, biometrics, fraud detection, out-of-distribution detection, adversarial behavior, or closely related security problems.
- A PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related technical field is strongly preferred. We will also consider candidates with an MS and an exceptional research record.
- A demonstrated record of peer-reviewed publications in relevant conferences or journals, with substantive contributions to the research.
- Independently lead research, design rigorous experiments, and use results including negative or unexpected findings to guide next steps.
- Clear communication, including the ability to explain experimental design, findings, and limitations to technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice to haves

- Research on deepfakes, presentation attacks or adversarial robustness.
- Experience with noisy, imbalanced real-world data.
- Experience shipping ML research to production.

## Benefits and Perks

For full-time US-based employees (excluding internship and contractor opportunities), Persona offers a wide range of benefits, including medical, dental, and vision, 3% 401(k) contribution, unlimited PTO, quarterly mental health days, family planning benefits, professional development stipend, wellness benefits, among others.

For full-time UK employees, Persona offers a wide range of benefits, including private medical insurance, dental insurance, a 6% employer pension contribution, unlimited PTO, a monthly wellness stipend, professional development stipend, co-working stipend, and more.

As part of our interview process, all candidates will be asked to verify their identity with Persona. This step is used solely to confirm that candidates are who they say they are, and will have no impact on hiring decisions.

## About Persona

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Persona provides a flexible and secure identity verification platform that helps businesses verify real people and real businesses online.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage and total funding not publicly available in provided sources)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: Not publicly available from provided sources
- **Founders**: Not publicly available from provided sources

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Identity verification, fraud prevention, compliance (KYC/KYB), workforce verification
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises, fintechs, online platforms, and any business that needs to verify users or businesses
- **Mission or purpose**: “Keeping the internet human” and “humanizing online identity” – building a safer and more accessible internet by being the identity layer that powers it.

## Products & Services
- **Verifications**: Verify identities using modern signals and authoritative records.
- **Dynamic Flow**: Build custom information-collection flows that maximize conversion and minimize fraud.
- **Workflows**: Automate identity processes around use cases like KYC, KYB, and workforce verification.
- **Cases**: Equip your team or Persona’s platform agents to review cases and investigate activity.
- **Graph**: Detect coordinated fraud in real time with link analysis and signals.
- **Privacy Portal**: A secure, user-friendly portal for consumers to manage their privacy and personal data requests.

All offerings are modular, API-first, and delivered as a SaaS platform.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Not publicly available (revenue and total funding not found in provided sources)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not mentioned in provided search results
- **Growth Signals**:
    - Described as “one of the fastest growing companies in technology” on their early careers page.
    - Hiring heavily for mid-level talent (59% of roles) with 32 open positions; 38% of roles are in engineering.
    - 100% of job postings require OpenAI skills, indicating deep AI integration across all functions.
    - Hiring has been flat for two months, suggesting steady rather than explosive momentum.
    - Company concentrated in San Francisco (26 of 32 roles), with 4 remote positions.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Security and privacy at the core**: Compliant and certified to the highest industry standards; provides a consumer privacy portal.
- **Modular, flexible platform**: Building blocks for any identity use case, from simple verification to complex fraud orchestration.
- **Graph technology**: Real-time link analysis to detect coordinated fraud – a differentiator over basic verification tools.
- **Speed without compromise**: Culture of efficiency while maintaining high quality.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI integration across every function**: OpenAI skills required for all roles, signaling that AI is core to product, sales, engineering, and operations.
- **Scaling execution**: Inverted seniority mix (59% mid-level, 16% senior) suggests the company is prioritizing doers and individual contributors over management layers.
- **Expanding identity lifecycle**: From initial verification to ongoing fraud prevention and workforce identity.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Values**: “People first,” “speed is not a tradeoff,” “work in public,” “start small, think big,” “lead by serving.” Emphasis on collaboration, continuous improvement, and high standards.
- **Benefits & Perks**:
    - 401(k) with 3% automatic annual contribution (even if employee doesn’t contribute).
    - Unlimited PTO and quarterly company-wide wellness days.
    - 16 weeks parental leave (including all paths to parenthood).
    - Annual professional development reimbursement (courses, books, conferences).
    - Monthly wellness stipend (gym, books, etc.) and coworking stipend for remote employees.
    - Commuter benefits, catered lunch on in-office days, weekly company meetings, team offsites, and social events.
- **Engineering Culture**: Mentorship from former Square, Dropbox, and Coursera engineers; ship features end-to-end from week one; strong early career programs (internships, technical leadership program).
- **Work Model**: Hybrid/office-first in San Francisco, with some fully remote roles available. In-office presence includes catered meals and curated social events.

## Sources
1. [withpersona.com/careers](https://withpersona.com/careers/)
2. [withpersona.com](https://withpersona.com/)
3. [withpersona.com/about](https://withpersona.com/about)
4. [withpersona.com/early-careers](https://withpersona.com/early-careers/)
5. [hirejack.com/companies/withpersona.com](https://hirejack.com/companies/withpersona.com/)

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