Senior Data Scientist - AI Agents Team

Surf AI is building the world’s first context-driven, agentic security platform. We focus on systems that don’t just surface risk, but actively help organizations resolve it.

Surf is backed by Cyberstarts, Boldstart Ventures and Accel, investors behind category-defining security companies, and founded by repeat entrepreneurs with deep experience in identity, security, and enterprise risk.

We’re a small, senior team working at the intersection of security, AI, and distributed systems. Our work blends agentic systems with data-driven analysis and applied security research to operate safely in real enterprise environments.

Who are we looking for?

We're looking for a Senior Data Scientist with deep expertise in LLMs, NLP, and agentic systems to join our applied research and development AI team. You’ll design, prototype, and productionize AI systems that power conversational experiences, autonomous agents, and intelligent recommendations. This role blends hands-on research with real product impact - ideal for a builder who thrives at the intersection of machine learning, product, and engineering.

What you'll do

• Develop and deploy LLM-based systems, including conversational agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and recommendation engines.
• Lead applied research initiatives from ideation to production, focusing on measurable business and product impact.
• Build robust evaluation pipelines for prompt optimization, model quality, and agent reliability.
• Collaborate with backend and AI engineers to integrate models into scalable, monitored production environments.
• Contribute to our agent framework by designing workflows, memory mechanisms, and multi-step reasoning capabilities.
• Stay current with emerging LLM and agentic techniques, translating research into practical, production-ready solutions.

Required Skills & Experience

• 5+ years of experience as a Data Scientist or Applied ML Engineer with a strong track record of shipping production models.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with PyTorch, LangChain, and related LLM frameworks.
• Proven experience with LLM operations—prompting, embeddings, fine-tuning, RAG, and evaluation.
• Solid understanding of data modeling, experimentation, and performance measurement for ML-driven products.
• Experience collaborating in cross-functional teams of engineers, researchers, and product managers.

Why Join Us?

If you want to work on foundational systems, ship AI into production, and help define how agentic security actually operates, this is an opportunity to do it early and with real ownership.