CTO/Chief Scientist - AI Security

Job Description:

CTO / Chief Scientist AI Security

Location: Bengaluru, India

Function: AI Security - Technology & Innovation Centre (TIC)

Employment Type: Full-time

Role Purpose:

The CTO / Chief Scientist AI Security will establish and lead AI Security Technical Innovation Centre (TIC) in India. This role serves as the highest technical and scientific authority for AI Security, responsible for defining research direction, technical architecture, and long-term strategy across secure AI development and AI supply-chain assurance. The role combines deep AI/ML research leadership with platform-level system design and enterprise deployment accountability.

Key Responsibilities:

- Define and own the AI Security technology and research roadmap aligned to multi-year TIC objectives.

- Lead and govern advanced AI security research spanning model inspection, unlearning, provenance, and compliance assurance.

- Act as Chief Architect for AI Security platforms including scanners, verification pipelines, lineage systems, and policy engines.

- Drive translation of research outcomes into proofs of concept, benchmarked solutions, and deployable platform components.

- Establish technical standards for security claims, verification, benchmarking, and reproducibility.

- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to research, engineering, MLOps, and product teams.

- Ensure adherence to emerging global AI security standards, regulatory expectations, and compliance requirements.

- Lead intellectual property generation and publication in reputed AI and security forums.

- Represent in relevant external technical, academic, and industry engagements related to AI security.

Required Qualifications & PhD or Masters degree (CS, AI/ML, Crypto, Cybersecurity) from Premier institute with strong research depth in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related 15+ years of experience in advanced AI/ML research, security engineering, or deep-tech system architecture.

- Earlier Experience: R&D labs, Research projects, Product companies, AI projects, Enterprise solutions ownership.

- Proven experience leading principal-level technical or research initiatives and translating research into real-world systems.

- Earlier Experience as CTO (in similar tech domain) is preferable.

Required Technical Skills:

- Deep expertise in Large Language Models, foundation models, fine-tuning, LoRA/adapters, and RAG-based architectures.

- Strong understanding of model internals including weight-space analysis, activation behaviour, and interpretability.

- AI security and forensics experience covering model fingerprinting, backdoor detection, model reuse/derivation analysis, and supply-chain risk.

- Hands-on knowledge of model unlearning techniques, verification methods, privacy assurance, and side-effect control.

- Architecture experience for scalable AI security platforms, including experimentation pipelines, MLOps, APIs, and enterprise deployment.

Leadership & Personal Attributes:

- Recognised technical authority with strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

- Ability to operate across research depth, architectural design, and executive-level communication.

- Mentorship-oriented leadership style with a long-term innovation mindset.

Success Indicators:

- Establishment of a world-class AI Security research and innovation capability.

- Delivery of differentiated AI security technologies progressing from research to platform adoption.

- Strong external recognition through publications, IP creation, and industry impact.

- Premier Institutes (Technology): Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Technology, NIT Trichy, NIT Warangal, IIIT Allahabad.

- Premier Institutes (CoE Cybersecurity): Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham TIFAC CORE, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research.

- Premier Institutes (Math, Crypto, Cybersecurity): Indian Statistical Institute, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Madras Institute of Mathematics (it is good to have association with Institute of Mathematical Science, Chennai or Indian Academy of Science, Bengaluru, or TIFR).

(ref:hirist.tech)