Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Machine Learning

UK date and time: 20-September-2026 15:30

Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Machine Learning

central Oxford

We are seeking a full-time Postdoctoral Research Assistant to join Torr Vision Group at the Department of Engineering Science, central Oxford. The post is funded by Coefficient Giving and is fixed-term to the 30th June 2027.

We are seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to investigate the
safety, security, control, and capabilities of advanced AI systems
, with a particular focus on increasingly autonomous and agentic models. The research will examine frontier AI systems that interact with operating systems, APIs, software tools, other agents, and complex environments, moving beyond text generation towards systems capable of planning, pursuing objectives, and executing long-horizon tasks.

A central focus will be
agentic safety, adversarial robustness, and AI control
. This includes agent hijacking, prompt injection, adversarial manipulation, unsafe tool use, oversight evasion, and
transferable attacks that generalise across agents, models, tasks, and environments
. We are particularly interested in building agentic systems that can autonomously discover, test, and evaluate general attack strategies against other AI agents, helping identify systematic vulnerabilities rather than attacks specific to a single model or setting.

Candidates should possess a PhD (or be near completion) in PhD in Computer Science, AI, Security, or a related field. You will have a Strong background in machine learning and/or computer security and Experience working with LLMs or agent-based systems.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to

For more information about working at the Department, see

The Department holds an Athena Swan Bronze award, highlighting its commitment to promoting women in Science, Engineering and Technology