Research Scientist II – Deepfake Detection & Authentication (Video & Audio) - Pindrop

Who We Are

Pindrop is a cybersecurity company delivering continuous identity verification across voice, video, and digital interactions. Powered by the Pindrop Intelligence Network, our unified trust platform helps enterprises answer three critical questions:

• Is this identity synthetic? Detect AI-generated and manipulated voice and video.
• Is this identity risky? Identify fraud, suspicious behavior, and other risk signals.
• Is this identity known? Authenticate identities using voice, device, behavioral, and other signals.

Pindrop protects billions of high-risk interactions for leading financial institutions, insurers, and healthcare organizations, informed by more than 8 billion real-world interactions annually and backed by 300+ patents.

What You’ll Do

As a Research Scientist II on our core Research team, you will independently drive research initiatives, deliver reproducible experimental results, and help translate machine learning models into real-world product solutions across deepfake video, deepfake audio, and voice/identity authentication.

• Conduct research to develop new capabilities and enhance existing technologies for synthetic media detection, multimodal deepfake identification (audio and video), and real-time identity authentication.
• Design, implement, and evaluate deep learning algorithms related to audio-visual deepfake detection, speech synthesis detection, facial manipulation analysis, and biometric authentication.
• Design, develop, and maintain internal research packages and pipelines to train, evaluate, and benchmark ML models, ensuring computational efficiency and reproducibility.
• Partner closely with research engineers and engineering teams to transition complex research prototypes into efficient, scalable, production-ready systems across cloud and edge platforms.
• Support targeted investigations by analyzing model behavior, edge cases, attack vectors, and detection gaps, turning insights into measurable improvements in model robustness.
• Participate in regular code and research reviews, cross-functional project syncs, and contribute to patents and peer-reviewed papers for top-tier computer vision, speech, audio, and machine learning conferences.

Who You Are

• You remain focused, persistent, and scientifically rigorous through multiple experimental iterations, navigating ambiguity in complex multimodal datasets and evolving attack techniques.
• You bridge the gap between research and engineering teams, communicating complex AI/ML and biometric concepts clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• You take ownership of assigned research workstreams, making sound technical decisions grounded in empirical data, mathematical theory, and experimental validation.
• You communicate research progress transparently and maintain high standards of technical integrity, documentation, and model reproducibility.
• You train and evaluate machine learning models with strong awareness of bias, drift, and operational deployment constraints.

Your Skill-Set

Must-Haves

• Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent industry research experience).
• 3+ years of professional or post-graduate research experience in Deep Learning, with a dedicated focus on at least one core area: computer vision (facial analysis, video processing), speech/audio processing (speaker recognition, speech synthesis detection), or voice biometrics and identity authentication.
• Hands-on research experience in audio-visual deepfake detection, synthetic media identification, or multimodal biometric verification.
• Strong programming proficiency in Python with the ability to build, maintain, and structure reproducible research tooling, experimentation frameworks, or evaluation workflows.
• Hands-on mastery of modern machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or Keras.
• Track record of successful project delivery, supported by peer-reviewed publications or patent contributions.

Nice-to-Haves

• Functional programming experience in C/C++ or familiarity with model optimization and deployment tools (e.g., ONNX, TensorRT, TF-Lite, Go).
• Practical experience with real-time streaming video or audio processing pipelines and large-scale synthetic data generation/augmentation.
• Experience competing in or leveraging benchmarks from prominent challenges (e.g., DFDC, ASVspoof, NIST SRE/FRVT, Kaggle).
• Familiarity with natural language processing (NLP), foundational multimodal architectures, or sequence modeling applied to authentication and spoofing detection.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation package, including RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) for all employees.
• Remote-first environment with flexibility and autonomy.
• Meaningful in-person moments through regular team on-sites and company-wide events.
• Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO).
• Generous health and welfare plans, including an employer-paid employee-only option.
• Best-in-class Health Savings Account (HSA) employer contribution.
• Low-cost vision and dental plans for you and your family.
• Paid Parental Leave for birth, adoptive, and foster parents, plus one year of diaper delivery for new additions.
• Recurring monthly phone and internet allowance.
• Enhanced fertility and GLP-1 benefits.
• Annual Learning & Development stipend for courses, certifications, and conferences.