This role sits within CyberUnite, a €4 million HEA-funded all-island collaboration led by Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Limerick, with partners including MTU, UCC and Gas Networks Ireland, to strengthen the resilience of critical infrastructure across Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The post centres on research in applying novel AI approaches to detect and respond to cyber threats against Operation Technologies such as gas, water and electrical grids, supporting CyberUnite’s mission to develop resilient and adaptive cybersecurity solutions for shared social and economic systems and to protect key sectors from evolving cyber-attacks.

The successful researcher will apply expertise in Agentic AI frameworks, unsupervised learning, anomaly detection, and transformers to model the patterns and behaviours of cyber adversaries, including advanced persistent threats across IT and OT networks and devices.

A major focus is adapting transformer architectures to parse heterogeneous data streams, detect subtle, multi-stage threats that signature-based tools miss, and apply agent based AI approaches to build autonomous, context-aware responses that reason across alerts, threat intelligence and system constraints to maintain system stability and operations.

About the person:

The successful candidate must have, and your application should clearly demonstrate that you meet the following essential criteria:

• Normally have or about to obtain* a PhD in computer science, mathematics, engineering or physical sciences area (*must be obtained within 3 months of closing date of post).
• Significant, relevant high quality research experience in machine learning/AI or cybersecurity, or both, as evidenced by a strong track record of publications in leading journals and conferences in relevant areas.
• Hands-on experience in clustering and anomaly detection methods and/or experience in AI agentic systems.

To be successful at shortlisting stage, please ensure you clearly evidence in your application how you meet the essential and, where applicable, desirable criteria listed in the Candidate Information on our website.

This post is available for 36 months. Fixed term contract posts are available for the stated period in the first instance but in particular circumstances may be renewed or made permanent subject to availability of funding.