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

About the Role

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. What You’ll Do 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 What We’re Looking For 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

Nice to Have

Experience with edge AI or low-latency systems Familiarity with agent frameworks / multi-agent systems Contributions to open-source ML or security projects

Compensation

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