Research Intern - Security and Privacy, Azure Research

Job Description

Overview

Security and privacy are among the most significant concerns for enterprises and consumers using public cloud and AI platforms.
Azure Research is conducting pioneering research in the design and analysis of systems that guarantee strong security and privacy properties to cloud users, and in novel applications that are enabled by emerging security and privacy technology.

As part of our research, we are working on:

• designing and building confidential computing platforms based on novel security primitives and specialized accelerator hardware
• designing and building confidential computing services, such as confidential storage, networking, and distributed systems
• techniques to guarantee safety and reliability of agentic AI systems
• programming languages and language runtimes that guarantee safety by construction
• verification of cryptographic code and protocols
• testing for microarchitectural side-channel attacks, investigation of emerging side-channel attack vectors, and building system-level defences against side-channels
  
  

We place strong emphasis on systems that can be deployed at scale in the real world.
We work in close collaboration with external and internal research organizations, as well as with Microsoft product teams.
Our current focus areas include confidential computing systems, secure distributed computing, secure agentic AI, programming language security, software security, and verified cryptography.
Please find more information about our group and its work through the publications and projects pages.

Responsibilities

• Drive innovation in security, safety, and privacy by proposing, exploring, and analyzing new ideas through theoretical research, practical experimentation, and application-level solutions.
• Conduct cutting-edge research to identify emerging trends and technologies that strengthen security and privacy frameworks.#
• Develop and implement prototypes to validate concepts and demonstrate real-world applicability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate security and privacy solutions into products and services.
• Publish findings and present insights to internal stakeholders and external conferences to advance industry knowledge.
• Ensure compliance with global security and privacy standards while fostering a culture of safety and trust.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• Students enrolled in a PhD program or outstanding undergraduate/master’s students with research experience.
• One or two papers at top security conferences (e.g., USENIX, CCS, S&P, NDSS) or papers focusing on security, safety, or privacy and appearing at top venues on machine learning (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR), systems (e.g., SOSP, OSDI, NSDI, ATC, EuroSys), computer architecture (e.g., ISCA, ASPLOS, MICRO), or programming languages (e.g., PLDI, POPL, OOPSLA) is strongly desired
• Letter of support from a supervisor and, optionally, from another senior collaborator

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.