Cybersecurity Engineer (IT Security)

MATS Research is hiring its first dedicated IT Security professional to establish and own the corporate IT and security function. The role focuses on securing endpoints, identity, communications, compliance, incident response, and fellowship operations while enabling research and trusted partnerships with external AI labs.

Responsibilities:

• Build the secure-by-default environment. Design and deploy endpoint security (MDM/EDR) for a hybrid, two-country fleet spanning in-person teams in London and Berkeley and remote collaborators. Researchers and staff should be able to work with high-value code and data safely, without sacrificing velocity
• Own identity and access management. Define the lifecycle of identities for staff, collaborators, fellows, and the automated service accounts that touch MATS systems. Advance our identity toward a robust Zero-Trust architecture (SSO, least-privilege, and hardware-key MFA), and set the boundary between what AI agents can do on our behalf and what requires human authorization. Run rigorous access control that balances our open-science publication goals against the sensitivity of pre-publication research
• Secure communications and email. You will implement advanced email security, DMARC progression, phishing protection, and secure collaborative workflows, and governance of how AI tools are used across the organization. You will run a phishing simulation and training programme that shows measurable improvement in detection and response over time
• Turn compliance into acceleration. Act as the primary bridge between our research needs and the security requirements of external AI labs. Lead MATS through the audits required to gain and maintain frontier-model access (e.g. SOC 2, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials), and systematically manage vendor security reviews. MATS operates across the UK and US, so you will also handle the compliance that follows in both jurisdictions: data-protection obligations (UK GDPR, CCPA) and breach-notification timelines
• Run the security programme. Operate the day-to-day function: quarterly access reviews, backup verification, regulatory incident-reporting, vendor SOC 2 reviews, audit-evidence preparation, and the policy iterations that hold it all together. As MATS shares research data with external partners, own the privacy and data-processing side: consent handling, data-processing agreements, and retention
• Own the corporate-side incident response capability. You are the first responder when something happens to staff accounts, devices, email, or vendors. That includes maintaining the IR runbook, running quarterly tabletop exercises, coordinating with our external IR retainer firm for after-hours and depth, handling regulatory notification decisions with leadership and legal, and preparing post-incident reviews
• Stand up security for the fellowship. Design and operate the controls that bring 100–120 fellows per cohort into MATS's security perimeter and out again at cohort end: Fellowship Acceptable Use Policy, security onboarding, fellow data classification, segregated accounts and networks, and a reliable cohort-end off-boarding flow, ideally automated through SSO/SCIM to handle provisioning and revocation at cohort scale

Requirements:

• You are a security generalist who has stood up an IT and security function from scratch and can operate with autonomy in an early-stage, ambiguous environment
• You understand the threat model of a high-stakes research organization — phishing, account takeover, off-boarding gaps, vendor compromise, business-email compromise, and the targeted attention that comes with frontier-relevant work — and you can balance extreme security against an AI lab's "move fast" requirements
• You can translate technical security requirements into plain English for researchers, theorists, and leadership
• You are willing to use AI tools aggressively in your own workflow, with appropriate care not to get fooled
• Demonstrated experience building an IT and/or security function from scratch, operating with autonomy and ambiguity in an early-stage organization
• A hands-on, technical background: you are comfortable configuring systems, scripting automation, and personally setting up the stack
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks — SOC 2, ISO 27001, and/or Cyber Essentials — and with partner-lab security requirements
• The ability to translate security requirements into plain English for non-technical colleagues
• Sound judgment in balancing the sensitivity of frontier-relevant research against an organization's need to move quickly
• Comfortable standing up and operating a SIEM
• Experience from security-mature tech companies, fintech, or other AI safety / research organizations
• Hands-on experience with the kind of stack we run or expect to run: Rippling MDM; EDR (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, or Defender); SIEM (Panther, Sumo, or Datadog); Workspace admin; IAM tooling; training platforms (KnowBe4, Hoxhunt); and compliance tooling (Vanta, Drata, Secureframe)
• Experience defining identity lifecycle and least-privilege access for automated service accounts and AI agents
• Curiosity and genuine interest in MATS's mission
• You don't need to be an AI safety expert, but you should care about the work and be motivated by its importance
• Experience designing or operating an insider-threat or personnel-security programme — background screening, separation of duties, and need-to-know access — in research, government-adjacent, or IP-sensitive environments
• Background in mature SOC operations: 24/7 alert triage, threat hunting, penetration testing or red-team / purple-team exercises