Openings at Illinois ARCS
Illinois ARCS facilitates interactions among researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Singapore, and beyond, as well as industry partners. Home to full-time researchers, engineers, and interns, we focus on breakthrough innovations supporting infrastructures that expect to impact transforming communities and the use of information-intensive data.
As an equal-opportunity employer, we hire exceptionally talented individuals based on merit and qualifications. Applications are sought from individuals with strong credentials who embrace working with other high-performing colleagues of diverse nationalities, backgrounds, experiences, and ideas and who value diversity, ideas, inclusivity, and shared participation.
Postdoctoral Researcher
You will conduct research and development at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, focusing on protecting digital communities within smart nation environments. You will work closely with academic and industry collaborators to understand real-world requirements and co-develop cybersecurity solutions that address application needs. You will translate research outcomes into functional prototypes for deployment in systems that support these digital communities and their critical infrastructure.
Key Responsibilities
- Developing ways to use AI in cybersecurity, and defence against attacks that themselves use AI aimed at digital communities.
- Conduct full-stack research from upstream (fundamental) to downstream (translational)
- Prototyping of the technology for demonstration
Job Requirements
- Possess a PhD degree in the field of Computer Science/ Computer Engineering or other relevant fields.
- Strong research track in applying machine learning/deep learning technologies to solve real-world problems.
- Familiar with Machine learning/deep learning concepts and algorithms.
- Familiar with Python, C, and/or C++ programming.
- Familiar with modern machine learning software frameworks such as Pytorch and Tensorflow.
- Experience with computer architecture design and re-configurable computing (FPGA) is a strong plus.
- Experience in cybersecurity and cyber-physical systems (industrial control systems) is a strong plus.
- Experience with system development on embedded platform is a plus.
- Experience with cloud-IoT collaborative system is a plus.
- Experience with natural language processing is a plus.
(Senior) Software or Research Engineer (Project DCT 2)
We are seeking a (Senior) Software/ Research Engineer with strong expertise in penetration testing and secure software development. This role blends hands-on offensive security work with the design and development of security-focused tools, frameworks, and prototypes. You will collaborate with researchers to model, test, and exploit vulnerabilities, and work with engineers to integrate security into innovative systems.
Key Responsibilities
- Conduct advanced penetration testing and vulnerability assessments on applications, networks, and systems.
- Design and develop custom security tools, exploits, and proof-of-concept attacks for research purposes.
- Collaborate with research teams to simulate adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
- Analyze security flaws in emerging technologies and propose mitigation strategies.
- Contribute to publications, white papers, and technical reports on findings and methodologies.
- Familiarity with exploit development and reverse engineering.
- Solid knowledge of the MITRE ATT&CK framework and related offensive security models.
Preferred Qualifications
- OSCP, CREST CRT or similar certifications.
- Experience in security research and vulnerability disclosure.
- Knowledge of cloud security (AWS, Azure, GCP) and container security (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Strong technical writing and documentation skills.
- Previous involvement in Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions or bug bounty programs.