Security Research Coordinator

Quarkslab is a French company specializing in information security R&D, consulting and software development. Our expertise is in combining offensive and defensive security to help organizations adopt a new security posture: Force the attackers, not the defender, to adapt constantly. Through our consulting services as well as our software we provide tailored solutions to organizations, helping them to protect their assets, sensitive data, and users against increasingly sophisticated attacks.

Quarkslab is an avid and active user of, and contributor to, Open Source Software and develops and maintains state-of-the-art security tools such as LIEF , QBDI, Triton, Irma, and several other projects.

We develop two commercial software products: QFlow, a platform to automate and orchestrate security analysis of files at scale, and QShield, advanced code and data protection software to disrupt code lifting, reverse engineering and tampering attacks.

At Quarkslab research is a fundamental part of our company's DNA. We believe that keeping up to date with and advancing the state-of-the-art of information security requires a systematic effort to explore, discover, systematize and share knowledge through research activities. We strongly support the idea that computer security expertise and relevance rely on a permanent dialogue between defensive and offensive research. We combine scientific curiosity, an inclination to tackle technical challenges and our analysis of the needs of the information security market, to guide our research interests and topics. Our research seeks not just to push the state-of-the-art of our discipline, but also to address and help to solve real world problems, and to foster the professional growth of our team members.

Our research-oriented activities include:

• Internal team-driven and individual research projects.
• Internal research talks, annual research conference. 
• Developing open source tools, contributing to other's open source projects.
• Sharing results through talks at security and engineering conferences, papers, and technical articles.
• Participating in programme committees, technical steering groups, peer reviews in scientific journals.
• Teaching courses and classes in selected information security and software engineering topics.
• Directing or co-directing PhD thesis.
• A student internship and apprentices program that has been ongoing for several years.

We are seeking recently graduated PhDs eager to advance the state-of-the-art in information security in order to help improve and pursue excellence in all our R&D activities. As a post-doctoral security research coordinator at Quarkslab, you will integrate Quarkslab’s R&D Office, a cross-functional team under the guidance of the Chief Research Officer, that manages and coordinates all research activites of the company.

You will:

• Help develop, coordinate and manage externally funded research programs involving partners and government agency interactions. Write and review research project proposal.
• Collaborate with internal Quarkslab teams, academia, government and industry to advance research and development programs. 
• Participate in managing internal research projects, help to define, scope and plan projects and monitoring their progress. Giving guidance, proofreding papers and reports, participating in peer reviews.
• Contribute with your subject matter expertise in various projects of the company. Develop, publish and speak about your work.
• Animate all R&D activites accross Quarkslab.

Competitive candidates for this role will be recently graduated PhDs willing to both deepen their expertise and work on cross-topic projects while participating in the project management activities of Quarkslab’s R&D office.

Why work at Quarkslab?

Work with an amazing team, eager to learn and play with new approaches and technologies, mixing various skills (security, compilation, program analysis, reverse engineering, software engineering). International environment with offices in Paris and Buenos Aires (team croissants vs. team asado), representations in Tokyo and Singapore.

• Attend conferences in your field, learn from many internal events (weekly conference, trainings, research activities).
• Contribute and support Open Source Software: Our own tools and other people’s projects.
• Flexible work hours, work from home.
• Premium health insurance.

Recruitment Process:

1. Call with our Talent Acquisition Manager
2. General interview with a Research Tech Leader 
3. Resolution of a technical challenge specific to the R&D office and submission of a write-up
4. Technical interview in our Paris / Rennes / Buenos Aires offices or via video conference
5. HR debriefing and job offer

Quarkslab is proud to be an equal opportunity employer in the workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of ethnicity, color, ancestry, religion, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability or gender identity. If you have a disability or special needs that require certain accommodations, please let us know and we will be happy to consider them.

Competitive candidates for this role will be recently graduated PhDs willing to both deepen their expertise and work on cross-topic projects while participating in the project management activities of Quarkslab’s R&D office.

Mandatory Skills:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science||Electronic Engineering or a related field with a history of high quality academic or industrial research as evidenced by publications (articles, tools, presentations, patents, etc.)
• A good knowledge and involvement in the research community.
• Ability to translate ideas and brainstorms into well-structured and redacted research projects.
• Ability to manage uncertainty of research results and valorize research work.
• Willingness to acquire and apply project management skills.
• Self-motivated, strong learner, interested in cross-topic projects within cybersecurity, able to translate R&D methodologies and framework learnt in one specialty to other topics, and above all: scientifically curious.
• Ability to talk to many stakeholders, strong oral and written communication skills.

Desired Skills:

• Knowledge of how research funding works, with a focus on France and European funding resources.
• Subject matter expertise in one or more of these areas:
• Information Security topics applied to Artificial Intelligence
• Machine Learning applications for Information Security
• Programming Languages & Compiler Design
• Program Analysis for Security (new tooling techniques, automation techniques, etc.)
• Distributed Systems and Cloud Security
• Selected Cryptography topics: Cryptanalysis, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, Whitebox Cryptography, Cryptography Engineering, Blockchain security
• Hardware-based security