Apple · 3 hours ago
Staff Research Scientist, Applied Machine Learning Security (Agent Systems)
Cupertino, California, United States
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$181K/yr - $318K/yrApple is at the forefront of protecting billions of users worldwide, building security into every product, service, and experience they create. The role focuses on applied security research for production ML systems, specifically on agentic and tool-using models, and involves leading research efforts to identify security risks and drive mitigations.
AppsArtificial Intelligence (AI)BroadcastingDigital EntertainmentFoundational AIMedia and EntertainmentMobile DevicesOperating SystemsTVWearables
Responsibilities
Lead applied research on production agent systems: Conduct original security research on deployed agentic ML systems that interact with tools, APIs, memory, workflows, and sensitive data. Identify and characterize vulnerabilities such as indirect prompt injection, tool misuse, privilege escalation, goal hijacking, and cross-context data leakage, and develop defenses validated under production constraints
Design realistic adversarial evaluations: Build and maintain adversarial testing frameworks that reflect real attacker incentives and system complexity, including multi-step, cross-tool, and persistence-based attacks that surface failure modes missed by standard evaluations
Drive defenses into shipping systems: Develop mitigations that are compatible with production requirements around latency, reliability, debuggability, and privacy. Influence architectural choices such as capability scoping, isolation boundaries, execution control, and runtime enforcement
Own threat models for agent deployments: Define trust boundaries and threat models for agentic ML across Apple platforms and services, and translate them into actionable security requirements and release criteria
Bridge research and engineering: Partner deeply with ML platform teams, product engineering, and product security to ensure research insights become design guidance, test infrastructure, and launch blockers where appropriate
Provide technical leadership: Set standards for applied ML security research, mentor other researchers, and influence how agent systems are reviewed, built, and released across the organization
Qualification
Required
Ph.D. or equivalent experience in machine learning, security, systems, or a related field
Demonstrated experience in applied ML security, adversarial ML, or systems security with real-world impact
Strong experimental and engineering skills, with an emphasis on reproducibility and operational relevance
Preferred
Experience researching or securing LLM-based or tool-augmented ML systems
Ability to work fluidly across research, engineering, and security review processes
Track record of influencing production systems through research-driven insights
Publications in top venues are a plus, but production impact is the primary signal
Benefits
Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
Retirement benefits
A range of discounted products and free services
Reimbursement for certain educational expenses — including tuition
Discretionary bonuses or commission payments
Relocation
Company
Apple
Apple is a technology company that designs, manufactures, and markets consumer electronics, personal computers, and software.
Founded in 1976
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Apple has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (6998)
2024 (3766)
2023 (3939)
2022 (4822)
2021 (4060)
2020 (3656)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$5.67BKey Investors
Berkshire HathawayMicrosoftSequoia Capital
2025-05-05Post Ipo Debt· $4.5B
2025-01-16Post Ipo Debt· $0.31M
2021-04-30Post Ipo Equity
Leadership Team
Tim Cook
CEO
Craig Federighi
SVP, Software Engineering
Recent News
Venrock
2025-12-01
2025-09-25
Mac Daily News
2025-09-25
Company data provided by crunchbase