Remote Principal Researcher Jobs
Remote principal researcher jobs are open across the U.S. at remote-first companies and distributed teams scaling their research functions. Employers hiring remotely right now include Commence, G2, and ICF, working across Non-Profit & Social Services. See the openings below and apply to the ones that match your experience.
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Microsoft Security is seeking a Principal AI Model Security Researcher to join a new red team spanning adversarial machine learning, model integrity, offensive security, automation and privacy. You will conduct hands-on red teaming of advanced AI models and the training and evaluation systems around them; design attacks that expose exploitable model behavior; and turn critical findings into durable improvements such as regression evaluations, adversarial environments, stronger controls and safety training data.
These are roles for researchers who can move between scientific investigation and operational security work. Success requires depth in adversarial machine learning or offensive security, fluency across the broader AI system, and the judgment to produce reproducible evidence that research, engineering, product and independent review teams can act on.
Work Location: Redmond, WA (preferred). Remote work within the United States will be considered for highly qualified candidates.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.
Responsibilities
- Design and execute white-box attacks against advanced AI models, checkpoints, post-training systems, reward functions, data pipelines and evaluation environments.
- Investigate adversarial behavior including jailbreaks, harmful permissiveness, reward hacking, deceptive behavior, capability elicitation, privacy leakage, data poisoning and model supply-chain compromise.
- Build high-fidelity experiments and automated attack suites that reproduce realistic threats and run continuously against new checkpoints and system configurations.
- Develop rigorous threat models, attack hypotheses and reproducible evidence; assess severity, exploitability and customer or governance impact.
- Partner with model scientists, engineers and product security teams to identify root causes and drive findings to verified remediation.
- Convert confirmed weaknesses into regression evaluations, adversarial training or RL environments, safety training data and stronger technical controls.
- Communicate findings and residual risk clearly to technical teams, leadership and independent reviewers.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
-
Doctorate in relevant field AND 3+ years related research experience
-
OR Master's Degree in relevant field AND 4+ years related research experience
-
OR Bachelor's Degree in relevant field AND 6+ years related research experience
- OR equivalent experience.
-
OR Bachelor's Degree in relevant field AND 6+ years related research experience
-
OR Master's Degree in relevant field AND 4+ years related research experience
Other Requirements:
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
- Hands-on expertise in adversarial machine learning, AI security, model evaluation, privacy attacks, offensive security or a closely related discipline.
- Experience designing experiments or security investigations that produce reproducible technical evidence and actionable remediation.
- Programming and research-prototyping ability sufficient to build attack tooling, evaluation harnesses and automated tests.
- Experience testing large language models, post-training or reinforcement-learning systems, agentic systems or AI-enabled security products.
- Knowledge of reward modeling, interpretability, capability elicitation, data extraction, poisoning, privacy or model supply-chain security.
- Experience with cyber exploitation, cloud or identity security, sandboxing, secure evaluation environments or offensive-security operations.
- Demonstrated ability to communicate complex attack paths, severity and residual risk to researchers, engineers and senior decision-makers.
- Experience converting research findings into production evaluations, mitigations, training interventions or security controls.
Research Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process.
Microsoft Security is seeking a Principal AI Model Security Researcher to join a new red team spanning adversarial machine learning, model integrity, offensive security, automation and privacy. You will conduct hands-on red teaming of advanced AI models and the training and evaluation systems around them; design attacks that expose exploitable model behavior; and turn critical findings into durable improvements such as regression evaluations, adversarial environments, stronger controls and safety training data.
These are roles for researchers who can move between scientific investigation and operational security work. Success requires depth in adversarial machine learning or offensive security, fluency across the broader AI system, and the judgment to produce reproducible evidence that research, engineering, product and independent review teams can act on.
Work Location: Redmond, WA (preferred). Remote work within the United States will be considered for highly qualified candidates.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.
Responsibilities
- Design and execute white-box attacks against advanced AI models, checkpoints, post-training systems, reward functions, data pipelines and evaluation environments.
- Investigate adversarial behavior including jailbreaks, harmful permissiveness, reward hacking, deceptive behavior, capability elicitation, privacy leakage, data poisoning and model supply-chain compromise.
- Build high-fidelity experiments and automated attack suites that reproduce realistic threats and run continuously against new checkpoints and system configurations.
- Develop rigorous threat models, attack hypotheses and reproducible evidence; assess severity, exploitability and customer or governance impact.
- Partner with model scientists, engineers and product security teams to identify root causes and drive findings to verified remediation.
- Convert confirmed weaknesses into regression evaluations, adversarial training or RL environments, safety training data and stronger technical controls.
- Communicate findings and residual risk clearly to technical teams, leadership and independent reviewers.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
-
Doctorate in relevant field AND 3+ years related research experience
-
OR Master's Degree in relevant field AND 4+ years related research experience
-
OR Bachelor's Degree in relevant field AND 6+ years related research experience
- OR equivalent experience.
-
OR Bachelor's Degree in relevant field AND 6+ years related research experience
-
OR Master's Degree in relevant field AND 4+ years related research experience
Other Requirements:
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
- Hands-on expertise in adversarial machine learning, AI security, model evaluation, privacy attacks, offensive security or a closely related discipline.
- Experience designing experiments or security investigations that produce reproducible technical evidence and actionable remediation.
- Programming and research-prototyping ability sufficient to build attack tooling, evaluation harnesses and automated tests.
- Experience testing large language models, post-training or reinforcement-learning systems, agentic systems or AI-enabled security products.
- Knowledge of reward modeling, interpretability, capability elicitation, data extraction, poisoning, privacy or model supply-chain security.
- Experience with cyber exploitation, cloud or identity security, sandboxing, secure evaluation environments or offensive-security operations.
- Demonstrated ability to communicate complex attack paths, severity and residual risk to researchers, engineers and senior decision-makers.
- Experience converting research findings into production evaluations, mitigations, training interventions or security controls.
Research Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process.
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Find JobsRemote Principal Researcher Job Market
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Non-Profit & Social Services
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in remote principal researcher jobs.
- PhD or Master's degree in a relevant field such as psychology, human-computer interaction, or cognitive science
- Five or more years of applied research experience, with demonstrated senior or lead responsibility
- Proficiency in both qualitative and quantitative research methods, including survey design and usability testing
- Experience presenting research findings to executive or senior cross-functional stakeholders
- Ability to define a research agenda independently and manage multiple concurrent projects
- Familiarity with data analysis tools such as Python, R, or SQL alongside research-specific platforms
Tips for Your Remote Principal Researcher Job Search
Apply early to remote roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists remote principal researcher openings from across the U.S. in one place, so you can find roles that match your research domain and apply directly before postings fill. Applying in the first few days meaningfully improves your visibility.
Show async research communication in your portfolio
Remote principal researcher hiring teams look for evidence that you communicate complex findings without a live walkthrough. Include written research reports, Loom walkthroughs of study designs, or slide decks built for async review to demonstrate this directly.
Target remote-first companies with distributed research teams
Companies built as remote-first from the start have the infrastructure and culture to integrate a principal researcher working independently. Look for organizations with documented async workflows, written decision-making processes, and existing remote research staff.
Prepare for structured remote research interviews
Remote interviews for principal researcher roles frequently include a research critique exercise or take-home case study sent before the call. Practice presenting your methodology and tradeoffs clearly in writing, since your written response often carries as much weight as the live discussion.
Remote Principal Researcher Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a remote principal researcher job?
Remote principal researcher roles go to candidates who can demonstrate deep independent judgment, strong written communication, and the ability to drive research programs without in-person oversight. Remote-first tech companies and distributed product organizations are the most active hirers. What gives you an edge is showing concrete research impact, proficiency with async collaboration tools, and a portfolio or case study that communicates findings clearly without a live presentation.
Which companies hire remote principal researchers?
Companies hiring remote principal researchers right now include Commence, G2, and ICF, based on current remote listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Remote-first technology firms, distributed healthcare and life sciences organizations, and large enterprise software companies tend to hire principal researchers remotely most consistently.
Can you get a remote principal researcher job with no experience?
Yes, but remote principal researcher roles at this seniority level are uncommon for candidates without prior research experience, since independent scoping and stakeholder influence are expected from day one. Your best path is building a portfolio of self-directed projects, contributing to open research communities, or targeting smaller remote-first companies that value demonstrated curiosity and rigorous thinking over years of formal experience.
Do you need a degree for remote principal researcher jobs?
Usually, but the degree requirement varies by sector and company. Many remote employers, especially in technology and product-led organizations, weigh a strong portfolio of published work, research artifacts, or demonstrable methodology over the credential itself. What matters most is your ability to frame ambiguous problems, design rigorous studies, and communicate findings clearly in a remote, async context.
Which industries hire the most remote principal researchers?
Most remote principal researcher openings sit in Non-Profit & Social Services, per current remote listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. These sectors rely on distributed research teams to inform product strategy, clinical decisions, and policy design across geographically dispersed organizations.
See All 18 Remote Principal Researcher Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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