Cambridge Internship Program Azure Research,Security and Privacy

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:

• Techniques to guarantee safety and reliability of agentic AI systems
• Verification of cryptographic protocols and security-critical code, including AI-assisted verification
• Using AI agents to assist with verification of distributed protocols and formalise systems research
• Designing and building confidential computing platforms and low-level systems
• Designing and building confidential computing and distributed systems, including secure multi-user AI inference and fault-tolerant protocols
• Techniques that apply deterministic tools to improve efficiency and reliability of LLM-based vulnerability scanners
• Testing for microarchitectural side-channel attacks and developing techniques for CPU fuzzing

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 organisations, as well as with Microsoft product teams. Our current focus areas include confidential computing systems, secure distributed computing, secure agentic AI, software security, microarchitectural security, and formal verification.

Responsibilities

• Propose, explore, and analyse new ideas in security, safety, and privacy domains, contributing to one or more of the group's research areas.
• Build prototypes for new ideas or contribute to existing projects through theoretical, practical, and application-level work.
• Communicate research findings through technical discussions, presentations, papers, or other research outputs.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Students enrolled in a PhD program or outstanding undergraduate/masters 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.

The base pay for this internship is £4,853.00 per month. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: 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.