AI Security - Applied AI Researcher
Cato Networks is hiring an AI Security - Applied AI Researcher in Tel Aviv, Israel. Level rates it ; you can apply on Cato Networks.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Hugging Face, PyTorch and AI agents.
- Level classifies it as a senior role.
- Level lists 107 other open roles at Cato Networks.
AI in this role
Cato Networks is the converged network and security cloud for the AI era.
As AI reshapes cybersecurity, enterprises face a dual challenge: unlocking AI’s potential while defending against AI-driven attacks. Cato addresses both through a unified, cloud-native platform, providing the visibility and context to prioritize risks and stop threats in real time across users, applications, data, and AI agents.
Join us as we scale: take on ambitious technological challenges and shape the next generation of enterprise security at a company trusted by thousands of organizations worldwide.
As part of this exciting journey, Cato recently joined forces with Aim Security — a fast-growing innovator redefining how organizations secure and build with AI.
Backed by Cato’s global reach and powered by Aim’s startup energy, we’re building the future of AI Security together.
We are on a mission to enable enterprises to adopt AI safely and securely. Our approach combines advanced AI research with practical implementation to offer seamless integration and protection for our clients' AI based tools and infrastructure.
We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist / Applied AI Researcher with deep expertise in NLP and LLM-based systems, and the ability to operate across the full lifecycle, from problem formulation and research design to production deployment and real-world iteration.
You won’t be working on isolated experiments. You’ll be part of a multidisciplinary team that owns the system end-to-end and is responsible for how it behaves under real production traffic.
This role requires strong scientific discipline and the maturity to balance innovation with practical constraints.
What you’ll do
- End-to-End Ownership: Lead AI security solutions from problem formulation and research design through model development, evaluation, and production deployment. Ensure solutions are measurable, reliable, and effective under real-world traffic.
- Drive Technical Direction: Take responsibility for ambiguous AI security problems, propose thoughtful approaches, and drive structured experimentation and deep model analysis.
- Build for Scale: Design systems that are not only accurate, but scalable, efficient, and robust.
- Staying Updated: Continuously explore advances in NLP and LLM-based systems, and critically assess what is worth integrating into a production environment.
What you bring
- 5+ years of hands-on experience applying NLP/DL algorithms, techniques to real-world problems, with strong intuition for textual data and model behavior.
- Experience working with LLMs, with a strong grasp of practical best practices and the judgment to apply them throughout the R&D lifecycle when building task-specific models.
- Strong proficiency in Python and modern DL frameworks (PyTorch, HuggingFace, etc.).
- Experience designing experiments, defining metrics, and analyzing model failures.
- A strong drive to solve complex AI security challenges, with both curiosity and pragmatism.
Why join us
- Be part of a lean, elite team where your work doesn’t just sit in a backlog — you’ll ship real value, frequently, and see the impact.
- Bridge the best of startup energy with the scale and reach of Cato Networks: you’ll build for enterprise-grade reliability and commercial scale, and also retain the innovation spirit of a startup.
How we rate this
AI Security - Applied AI Researcher at Cato Networks rates 95 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- What NLP problem have you worked on, and how did you measure whether it actually worked?
- Tell me about a research question you investigated. What did you find?
- What's a project where you used Hugging Face hands-on?
- Walk me through how you've used PyTorch in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, NLP, AI Research, Hugging Face, and PyTorch. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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