---
title: 'Senior Manager, Applied AI Research at Gen Digital Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-applied-ai-research-gen-digital-inc-prague-tcjnxrvxxj6p'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-05'
---

# Senior Manager, Applied AI Research at Gen Digital Inc.

- **Company:** [Gen Digital Inc.](https://feeny.ai/companies/gen-digital-inc)
- **Location:** Prague, Czech Republic
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/gen-digital/3f73b0ec-4caf-4658-a369-b3a4f9344485

## Job description

About Us: Gen is a global company dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its trusted consumer brands including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, MoneyLion and more. Our combined heritage is rooted in financial empowerment and cyber safety for the first digital generations, and today we deliver award-winning cybersecurity, online privacy, identity protection and financial wellness solutions to nearly 500 million users in more than 150 countries. Together, we share a collective passion and vision to protect consumers and help them grow, manage and secure their digital and financial lives. We’re always looking for smart, fearless and high-impact talent who see AI as a teammate – leveraging it to move faster and deliver meaningful results. When you’re part of Gen, you’ll have the flexibility, tools and support to do your best work and grow your career – from flexible working options and time off to competitive pay, benefits and well-being programs. At Gen, we are scrappy and relentlessly customer driven. We create room for healthy debate, experimentation and continuous learning, and we seek out people with different experiences, identities and ideas to join our team. You’ll work with people who back each other, respect each other and understand that our differences are a competitive advantage. If this sounds like you, we’d love you to be part of Gen.

About The Role: As Senior Manager, Applied AI Research, you will provide hands-on technical leadership across a portfolio of applied AI initiatives that protect over 500 million users worldwide, spanning Small Language Models, reinforcement learning, agentic systems, computer vision and classical machine learning. You will shape the architecture, modeling choices and production path for these programs while managing and growing a small team of 3-5 Research Engineers responsible for end-to-end delivery of applied AI, from problem framing and data curation through model training, customization and evaluation to deployment, monitoring and iteration at massive scale. This role blends technical leadership with people management. You will lead the team technically by setting direction, shaping architectures and staying close to the models and code, while also growing engineers and owning delivery. You will ensure that the models your team builds reach production and contribute to Gen’s cybersecurity mission.

In This Role, You Will:

- Provide hands-on technical leadership across multiple applied AI workstreams, including Small Language Models, reinforcement learning, agentic AI, computer vision and classical ML.
- Drive architecture, modeling choices and productionization decisions with your team of Research Engineers.
- Manage, mentor and grow a small team of 3-5 Research Engineers, including hiring, performance management, career development and day-to-day technical coaching.
- Keep the team focused, unblocked and outcome-oriented.
- Personally contribute to the hardest parts of the work by prototyping novel approaches, reviewing and improving model designs, and guiding training-run debugging on GPU clusters.
- Set the bar for research and engineering quality across the team.
- Own the full applied-AI lifecycle for your area, from problem framing and data strategy through model training, fine-tuning and evaluation to deployment, observability and continuous improvement in production systems serving 500M+ users.
- Champion an “always ship to production” team principle and partner with Platform, MLOps and Product Engineering teams to ensure models are deployed, monitored and measurably improving user outcomes.
- Translate business and security priorities into a concrete applied-AI roadmap and sequence priorities across multiple domains.
- Communicate trade-offs to senior leadership and report on delivery, model performance and impact.
- Establish and evolve team practices for experiment tracking, model evaluation, reproducibility, code review and responsible AI in high-stakes cybersecurity environments.

About You:

- [M.Sc](http://M.Sc). or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Mathematics or a related quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience with demonstrable deep-learning expertise.
- 5+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying machine-learning and deep-learning systems in production.
- 2-3+ years of experience leading or managing a small team of ML / Research Engineers, with responsibility for technical direction, delivery, hiring and people development across multiple applied AI areas.
- Deep hands-on expertise across several applied-AI areas, such as modern transformer-based Small Language Models, reinforcement learning (PPO, DQN, Actor-Critic and variants), agentic / tool-using LLM systems, computer vision or classical ML.
- Ability to select the right technique for each problem rather than defaulting to one approach.
- Expert proficiency in Python and PyTorch. Experience with JAX or TensorFlow is a plus.
- Experience training and fine-tuning models on multi-GPU clusters using frameworks such as DeepSpeed, FSDP or Hugging Face Accelerate.
- Strong mathematical foundation in linear algebra, optimization, probability and statistics, with the ability to read, evaluate and implement approaches from recent research papers.
- Proven track record of taking AI models all the way to production, including data pipelines, evaluation harnesses, quantization / compression, inference optimization, deployment using containers, Kubernetes and cloud, and post-deployment monitoring.
- Experience with MLOps and experiment-management tooling such as Weights & Biases, MLflow or similar.
- Experience with modern software-engineering practices including CI/CD, code review and observability.
- Demonstrated ability to lead a small technical team, including setting direction, running effective 1:1s, giving concrete feedback, hiring strong engineers and turning ambiguous business problems into shippable AI systems.
- Fluent English for effective communication within an international research and engineering organization.
- Hands-on technical leadership style and willingness to stay close to the code, models and production systems.
- Player-coach mindset, with the ability to combine technical problem-solving with people leadership and career development.
- Strong bias for shipping and a focus on deploying and measuring models in production.
- Excellent judgment when evaluating a portfolio of applied-AI opportunities, including knowing when to invest in a novel approach and when to choose the simplest solution that works.
- Clear communication skills, with the ability to translate complex ML concepts into decisions and trade-offs for product, security and executive stakeholders.
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous, high-tech environment and manage complex cross-functional problems with calm and structure.

Nice to Have:

- Publications at top-tier ML venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL or CVPR.
- Applied-AI experience in cybersecurity, privacy or identity.
- Experience with JAX or TensorFlow.

What's Next: After you submit your application, you can expect the following steps in the recruitment process:

- An interview with the Hiring Manager.
- A technical interview with senior members of the AI Research Lab.
- A cross-functional discussion with Product and stakeholder partners.
- A final conversation with Leadership.

## About Gen Digital Inc.

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Gen is a global leader in Cyber Safety, powering Digital Freedom through its trusted consumer brands Norton, Avast, LifeLock, and MoneyLion.
- **Entity Type**: Public (ticker not confirmed in provided sources; refer to SEC filings)
- **Headquarters**: Dual headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, United States, and Prague, Czech Republic
- **Founded**: Not explicitly disclosed; the merged entity (Gen) was formed in 2022 following the combination of NortonLifeLock and Avast
- **Founders**: Not publicly available for the merged company; predecessor brands were founded by Peter Norton (Norton) and Pavel Baudiš & Eduard Kučera (Avast)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Cybersecurity (Cyber Safety), digital privacy, identity protection, and financial wellness
- **Target customers**: B2C (individuals and families), with some B2B2C offerings for enterprises and institutions (breach response, employee benefits)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Powering Digital Freedom” – giving people the confidence, tools, and insights to control, manage, and grow their digital and financial lives

## Products & Services
- **Norton**: Award-winning cybersecurity, online privacy, and device protection for individuals and families (SaaS security suites, VPN, password manager, etc.)
- **Avast**: AI-powered threat detection and digital security products focused on malware, privacy, and real-time protection (freemium model, top-ranked by industry experts)
- **LifeLock**: Identity theft protection with proactive monitoring, alerts, and dedicated Identity Restoration Specialists (U.S. leader)
- **MoneyLion**: Digital financial wellness platform offering Instacash, RoarMoney, Credit Builder Plus, and a marketplace for financial products (B2C and B2B2C)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not provided in search results; as a publicly traded company, refer to SEC filings for current market cap
- **Key Metric**: Nearly 500 million global users across the brand ecosystem; MoneyLion has processed $7.5B+ in transaction volume and served 81M+ users since launch
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: No specific investors cited; the company partners with leading institutions for breach response, employee benefits, and identity protection
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Total cyberattacks blocked in 2024 is a key metric (exact number not shared)
  - MoneyLion’s rapid growth in transaction volume and user base
  - Expanding from protection into financial wellness and AI-driven personalization

## Competitive Advantages
- Family of trusted, globally recognized consumer brands (Norton #1 top-of-mind Cyber Safety brand, LifeLock leader in identity protection)
- Deep visibility into a vast threat network (machine learning and AI across ~500M users) enables superior threat detection and personalization
- Unique platform combining cybersecurity, privacy, identity restoration, and financial wellness – a “trust layer” for the digital economy
- Dual HQ presence (U.S. and Europe) provides diverse talent and regulatory insight

## Strategic Focus
- Building a unified AI-powered platform that delivers personalized, proactive, and automated Cyber Safety and financial empowerment
- Deepening leadership in Cyber Safety while extending into financial wellness to compound lifetime customer value
- Positioning Gen as the “trust layer” for the AI economy – bridging what AI can do and what consumers trust it to do
- Expanding B2B2C partnerships (breach response, employee benefits, identity protection for institutions)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Emphasizes collaboration, innovation, a giving mindset, and customer obsession. Values include “Think Big. Be Bold.”, “Be Scrappy. Make it Happen.”, and “Play to Win. Together.”
- **Work model**: Hybrid – choose which days to be in the office with an expectation of three days per week; unlimited paid time off; recognized holidays; parental leave and leaves of absence
- **Benefits**: 
  - Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) 
  - Performance-based bonuses
  - Learning & development (Learn@Gen, mentorship, degree/certification reimbursement, 24/7 eLearning)
  - Wellness: virtual fitness, on-site gyms, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) extending to dependents
  - Adoption, foster care, fertility, and surrogacy benefits in 15+ countries
  - Global recognition program (“Inspire”) and diverse employee communities
- **Interview process**: Transparent – 15-30 min recruiter chat, 2-3 skill/team interviews (may include a task), then offer. Reflects the company’s collaborative culture.

## Sources
1. [gendigital.com](https://www.gendigital.com/us/en/) – Company overview, brand family, mission, and metrics
2. [gendigital.com](https://www.gendigital.com/us/en/who-we-are/) – Who We Are, strategy, and solution details
3. [gendigital.com](https://www.gendigital.com/us/en/life-gen/) – Careers page with culture, values, and interview process
4. [gendigital.com](https://www.gendigital.com/us/en/life-gen/jobs/) – Open roles listing
5. [gendigital.com](https://www.gendigital.com/us/en/benefits/) – Benefits overview (hybrid work, wellness, learning, compensation)

## Other roles at Gen Digital Inc.

- [Machine Learning Manager - MoneyLion](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-manager-moneylion-gen-digital-inc-kuala-lumpur-zg8cqg5n9135) — Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- [Senior Principal Product Manager - MoneyLion (Rewards)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-principal-product-manager-moneylion-rewards-gen-digital-inc-kuala-lumpur-afac1xa189z5) — Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- [Creative Director Gen Studio](https://feeny.ai/job/creative-director-gen-studio-gen-digital-inc-united-states-new-york-ny-17nfnk3bq0zh) — United States / New York, NY
- [Associate Creative Director - Copy](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-creative-director-copy-gen-digital-inc-united-states-new-york-ny-yb48r4s85t4v) — United States / New York, NY
- [Machine Learning Engineer - MoneyLion](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-moneylion-gen-digital-inc-kuala-lumpur-6b7rzz97t62t) — Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- [Lead AI Scientist - MoneyLion](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-ai-scientist-moneylion-gen-digital-inc-kuala-lumpur-p26a1fja7fe2) — Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- [Senior Product Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-designer-gen-digital-inc-london-6cztgra31q85) — London, United Kingdom
- [Senior Backend Engineer (Java/Spring)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-java-spring-gen-digital-inc-united-states-new-york-ny-ke13at53t8jv) — United States / New York, NY
- [Senior Backend Engineer - (Java/Spring Boot)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-java-spring-boot-gen-digital-inc-united-states-new-york-0a02b0t5cjdk) — United States / New York, NY
- [Principal Product Manager - MoneyLion Marketplace](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-product-manager-moneylion-marketplace-gen-digital-inc-united-states-gx5gtgp2ntgv) — United States / New York, NY