The posting
As a global leader in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern organizations. Since 2011, our mission hasn’t changed — we’re here to stop breaches, and we’ve redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced AI-native platform. We work on large scale distributed systems, processing almost 3 trillion events per day and this traffic is growing daily. Our customers span all industries, and they count on CrowdStrike to keep their businesses running, their communities safe and their lives moving forward. We're proud to work for a mission-driven company leveraging AI to transform the way we work. CrowdStrikers drive their careers through flexibility and autonomy while also being expected to contribute to a culture of responsible AI adoption, experimentation, and innovation. We use an AI-first mindset as a force multiplier to proactively and continuously accelerate execution, build expertise, uncover insights, and solve complex problems. We’re always looking to add talented CrowdStrikers to the team who have limitless passion, a relentless focus on innovation and a fanatical commitment to our customers, our community and each other. Ready to join a mission that matters? The future of cybersecurity starts with you.
About the Role:
The CrowdStrike Data Science team is looking for a Principal Researcher to lead the technical direction of our AI red teaming research. This is an individual contributor role at the top of the technical ladder. You do not manage people. You set the research agenda, you do the hardest research yourself, you build the tooling that makes it repeatable, and you raise the bar for the researchers around you.
Our mission is to find out what can make an AI agent do something it should not, and whether the controls hold. We study how agentic systems are influenced through the channels they act on: tool results, files, MCP servers, web content, skills, memory and inter-agent messages. We red team frontier models and the agentic systems built on them, and we score every attack on observed actions, not on transcripts. Findings go through coordinated disclosure, become reusable attack modules in our automated AI security testing platform, and gate what ships in CrowdStrike's own AI products.
As the Principal Researcher, you decide which questions the team studies next, you answer the ones nobody else can, and you are the final technical reviewer on every disclosure, attack class and lab design. You are measured on whether the research got better, whether it reached the outside world, and whether the seniors around you can now do what only you could do before.
What You'll Do:
Research (about half of your time):
- Bring the research subjects. Propose and prioritise the attack classes, agent target classes and frontier model behaviours the team studies, with a written rationale for each and a kill date.
- Red team frontier models and the agentic systems. Track how each model release shifts attack success, agent behaviour and the controls that hold, and publish the result.
- Conduct vulnerability research and security assessments on agentic ecosystems end to end: hypothesis, exploit, observed action, disclosure, patch verification.
- Deliver state-of-the-art research: internal research notes on a monthly cadence, external papers, conference talks and coordinated disclosures with vendor credit.
- Investigate failure modes personally where the evidence is hardest to get: multi-agent systems, long-horizon tasks, defences that look like they work.
Tooling for research and red teaming:
- Design and write the tooling the research depends on: attack harnesses, action-trace capture, tool-call interception, payload converters, isolated lab targets and reproducible experiment runners.
- Turn each finding into a reusable attack module with an executing payload test in the team's automated AI security testing platform, and set the engineering bar for how that is done.
- Define the shared formats for attack content and action traces so red team output can be scored, replayed and reused by the benchmarking work without conversion.
Technical guidance (no people management):
- Own the external research agenda for AI red teaming: which venues, which disclosures, which collaborations, and the quality bar for anything that leaves the team.
- Review benchmark methodology from the other pillar for attacker realism, and accept review of your own findings for evidence quality.
- Communicate findings, limitations and risk clearly to engineering, product owners, legal and executives. Report what was not tested as plainly as what was.
What You'll Need:
- A public record of original security research: CVEs, coordinated disclosures, conference talks or peer-reviewed papers that you led. For this level we expect the record to be substantial and verifiable.
- Deep hands-on expertise in offensive security: exploitation, vulnerability research or red teaming, with the ability to find and demonstrate a vulnerability end to end yourself.
- Demonstrated research on LLMs or agentic systems: prompt and environment injection, tool-use abuse, jailbreaks, multi-agent attacks, or model evaluation under adversarial conditions. Shareable artifacts required.
- Strong Python and systems engineering skills. You write the harnesses, interceptors and converters the team runs on, and you review others' code to a production standard.
- Practical understanding of how agentic systems are built: tool use, planning loops, MCP, memory, sandboxing, and where trust boundaries sit.
- Experience setting technical direction for other researchers as a tech lead or principal, with evidence that people you worked with went on to lead work themselves.
- Exceptional written communication. Your research notes, disclosures and papers are the team's external face.
Bonus Points:
- Published research on AI security, agent security or adversarial machine learning at recognised venues.
- Experience red teaming frontier models directly, or working with frontier model providers on disclosures.
- Patents or shipped tooling in automated red teaming, agent evaluation or security testing.
- Experience with isolated lab design: sandboxing, egress control, C2 sinkholes, telemetry retention.
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Benefits of Working at CrowdStrike:
- Market leader in compensation and equity awards
- Comprehensive physical and mental wellness programs
- Competitive vacation and holidays for recharge
- Paid parental and adoption leaves
- Professional development opportunities for all employees regardless of level or role
- Employee Networks, geographic neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to build connections
- Vibrant office culture with world class amenities
- Great Place to Work Certified™ across the globe
CrowdStrike is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging where everyone is valued for who they are and empowered to succeed. We support veterans and individuals with disabilities through our affirmative action program.
CrowdStrike is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment. The Company does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, creed, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy or pregnancy-related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical disability (including HIV and AIDS), mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, membership or activity in a local human rights commission, status with regard to public assistance, or any other characteristic protected by law. We base all employment decisions--including recruitment, selection, training, compensation, benefits, discipline, promotions, transfers, lay-offs, return from lay-off, terminations and social/recreational programs--on valid job requirements.
If you need assistance accessing or reviewing the information on this website or need help submitting an application for employment or requesting an accommodation, please contact us at [email protected] for further assistance.
CrowdStrike Italy s.r.l. is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. Placement within the stated pay range is dependent on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, qualifications, job level, supervisory status, and location. The pay range for this position for all candidates based in Italy is fixed salary of €106,000 - €162,800 per year base pay. This role is also eligible for additional bonus/commission pay. The role holder would also be eligible for a comprehensive benefits package (including medical and dental insurance, access to Modern Health wellbeing resources, life and disability coverage).

