Applied Scientist II (Audio)

Company: Reality Defender
Location: New York City
Posted on: April 1, 2026

Job Description:

Who we are. Reality Defender is an award-winning cybersecurity company helping enterprises and governments detect deepfakes and AI-generated media. Utilizing a patented multi-model approach, Reality Defender is robust against the bleeding edge of generative platforms producing video, audio, imagery, and text media. Reality Defender's API-first deepfake detection platform empowers teams and developers alike to identify fraud, disinformation campaigns, and harmful deepfakes in real time. Backed by world class investors including DCVC, Illuminate Financial, Y Combinator, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Accenture, Rackhouse, and Argon VC, Reality Defender works with leading enterprise clients, financial institutions, and governments in order to ensure AI-generated media is not used for malicious purposes. Youtube: Reality Defender Wins RSA Most Innovative Startup The Applied Scientist II (Audio) Role. We are seeking an Applied Scientist II to build, tune, and deploy state-of-the-art audio deepfake detection models in real-world client environments. You will be responsible primarily for model tuning and deployment, ensuring robustness, reliability, and performance under diverse real-world test conditions — including adversarial and edge-case scenarios. The role requires deep hands-on expertise in model building, training, and benchmarking. What you’ll do Tune and optimize ML/DL models for production-scale audio deepfake detection. Investigate failure cases in the client environment, build custom evaluation frameworks, and implement mitigation strategies for model robustness. Drive model iteration for performance under a variety of real-world environments, e.g. compression artifacts, noise, telephony, and streaming pipelines. Present technical findings and model performance insights to internal stakeholders. Interface with Product and Engineering teams to build a deep understanding of the production environment and incorporate relevant evaluations for performance assessment. Who you are. Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, or related field. Fresh PhD graduate, or Masters with 3 years of industry experience building and deploying ML/DL models for AI products. Strong programming skills in Python and model ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX). Solid understanding of audio processing fundamentals, classification and detection metrics (ROC, DET curves, precision/recall trade-offs), model robustness and evaluation. Experience with large-scale training and benchmarking pipelines, either in an academic or an industry research role. What we offer. Reality Defender offers the following benefits to all our employees, regardless of location: Healthcare plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and partial coverage available for dependents Dental and Vision plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and their dependents Short/Long-term disability and life insurance plans with 100% premium coverage for employees FSA/HSA and 401k programs Equity compensation 20 days of PTO per year 12 weeks of Parental Leave Learning and Development budget Monthly wellness benefits Annual company-sponsored offsite For employees working from Reality Defender’s HQ in NYC, we offer the following benefits: Daily in-office lunch through UberEats Commuter benefits Remote Fridays Happy Hours and other local events

Keywords: Reality Defender, Middletown , Applied Scientist II (Audio), IT / Software / Systems , New York City, Connecticut