Hornetsecurity is a leading European cloud‑based cybersecurity provider, protecting more than 125,000 organizations in over 120 countries with innovative security, compliance and backup solutions. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Hannover, Germany, the company has grown and generated over $50 million in revenue while maintaining rapid international expansion and technological leadership in cloud security.
We are looking for an AI Research Engineer to join the PAIR team and play a central role in the design, development, experimentation, and production deployment of innovative AI-driven services (LLMs, autonomous agents, automation, NLP, analytics services, etc.).
You will be involved in the entire project lifecycle, from ideation and prototyping to production deployment, while actively contributing to the applied research initiatives of the Security Lab. You will work closely with multidisciplinary teams to turn ambitious ideas into concrete, robust, and scalable AI solutions in an environment that encourages continuous innovation.
Your mission
End-to-End Ownership of AI Solutions
* Design, develop, and maintain AI services from prototype to production.
* Ensure robustness, performance, scalability, and operational reliability of solutions in industrial settings.
Rigorous Experimentation & Applied Research
* Methodically test and benchmark AI models (standards, metrics, comparisons).
* Document results and propose innovative solutions tailored to cybersecurity challenges.
Innovation & Technology Watch
* Maintain active and structured monitoring of advances in AI/ML, LLMs, agents, NLP, as well as DevOps and MLOps best practices.
* Anticipate technological developments and contribute to the technical roadmap.
Technical Leadership, Documentation & Collaboration
* Be a key contributor to technical quality, knowledge sharing, and internal communication.
* Produce clear documentation and provide technical support to teams.
Your Profile
* Applied AI research engineer with at least 3 years of experience in backend development or AI in production.
* Strong command of Go (microservices, REST/gRPC, high performance) and Python for AI/ML.
* Solid experience with cloud-native architectures: Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability, distributed systems, and real-time services.
* AI/ML/NLP skills: LLMs, embeddings, classification, text generation, model evaluation; familiarity with MLOps is a plus.
* Proven ability to design, optimize, and deploy scalable AI services in production; experience in deploying AI prototypes is highly valued.
* Scientific curiosity, autonomy, rigor, and strong teamwork skills.
* Excellent communication skills, documentation abilities, and the capacity to simplify complex topics.
* Professional fluency in English, both written and spoken.
Your Benefits
* Hybrid home-office options and flexible, trust-based working hours.
* Be part of a growing global company in one of the most dynamic industries — cybersecurity.
* Short decision-making paths and flat hierarchies within an open and collaborative work environment.
* Opportunities for personal and professional development.
* Be-Active Bonus — financial support for fitness and sports club memberships.
* Temporary Employee Exchange Program — opportunities to work at international office locations (e.g. Malta, Madrid, Montreal, Washington, D.C.).
* Referral Bonus — €1,500 for each successful referral.