Staff Applied Research Engineer, Biometrics

The Biometric Solutions team at Veriff develops the biometric and liveness technologies that sit at the critical entry point of our automated identity verification funnel. Having established a robust baseline using existing SOTA architectures, we are now entering the next stage of our roadmap - institutionalizing a high-velocity "Fast-Follower" engine. This phase is focused on radicalizing our adaptation speed—moving from academic breakthroughs to production-grade, proprietary models in weeks, not months. Your role will bridge the gap between theoretical computer vision research and production code that protects millions of users. You’ll help us enable Biometric innovation by: Architecting the Research Pipeline: Building the infrastructure to reproduce and adapt SOTA papers within 4–6 week cycles, ensuring our models outpace the global fraud landscape. Engineering Physics-Based Defenses: Developing "attack-agnostic" features—leveraging optical flow, specular reflection, and 3D geometry—to exploit immutable physical laws that attackers cannot easily circumvent. Solving for Domain Heterogeneity: Implementing advanced Domain Adaptation and Generalization techniques to eliminate performance variance across device types (iOS vs. Android), demographics, and environmental conditions. Optimizing for SaaS Scale: Writing high-performance, maintainable Python code to ensure complex CV models remain cost-efficient and latency-optimized. Strategic Prototyping: Working from first principles to decide when a novel architecture is required versus when the solution lies in superior data curation or procedural attack generation. You are the right future Veriffian for the job if you have: 5+ years of experience in Applied Research or Data Science, with a proven track record of moving complex Computer Vision models from paper to production. Deep Mastery of CV Frameworks: Expert-level PyTorch or TensorFlow skills, specifically in implementing custom layers, loss functions, and domain-adversarial training loops. A "Physics-First" Intuition: Strong background in classical image processing (OpenCV) and 3D geometry; you understand why a 2D surface looks different than a 3D face to a sensor. Business & Production Acumen: You treat inference latency and compute cost as first-class constraints. You prefer an elegant, efficient solution over a "brute-force" ensemble. Strong Engineering Foundations: Proficient in Python, Bash, and SQL. You are comfortable building your own data pipelines and debugging containerized services. A skeptical, questioning approach: You don't take "SOTA" claims at face value. You investigate failure modes, hunt for bias, and demand empirical evidence before committing to a new direction. Why Veriff? We are the preferred identity verification platform partner for the world’s most innovative growth-driven organizations helping conveniently verify and safeguard users anywhere in the world. We support the broadest number of identity documents from nearly every country and territory in the world - and this is continually increasing! With a diverse team in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, and Estonia, as well as robust backing and funding from investors including Accel, Alkeon, IVP, Tiger Capital, and Y Combinator, we’re dedicated to helping businesses and individuals build a safer and more secure world. We strive to be the benchmark for trust online, and we take pride in being a positive force.When you join Team Veriff, we offer you the opportunity to have a real impact and advance your career, whilst looking after you along the way with a range of benefits designed with you in mind. Some of our favourites include... Flexibility to work from home Stock options that ensure your share in our success Extra recharge days on top of your annual vacation Comprehensive relocation support to Estonia or Spain Extensive medical, dental, and vision insurance to ensure you’re feeling great physically and mentally Learning and Development & Health and Sports budget that you are free to tailor to your own needs Four weeks of fully paid sabbatical leave after reaching your 5th work anniversary We are an Equal Opportunities employer committed to a diverse and representative team. Different opinions, perspectives and personalities push us forward. We want to hear from people who are passionate about their work and align with our values. Regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability. We also know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates - so rest assured, whoever you are, we want to hear from you! Please be informed that in the final stage of the recruitment process we may request you to go through identity verification. For more information, please see Recruitment Privacy Policy. #LI-CY1 #SPN