PhD Research Assistant / PhD Candidate — Audio Machine Learning & Signal Processing

FinOptima Solutions is developing real-time voice deepfake detection and AI interaction intelligence for banks and financial institutions. We have an existing model, research paper, datasets, GPU access and cloud infrastructure. We are now improving the model’s performance across different speakers, recording environments and telephone-quality audio.

**The role

We are looking for a hands-on Research Assistant who is currently pursuing a PhD in machine learning, speech processing, audio AI, signal processing, electrical engineering or a closely related field.

You will work with our CTO, machine learning team and academic advisor to improve the existing model and prepare it for controlled pilots. This is a practical research role involving code, datasets, experiments and model evaluation—not purely theoretical work.

What you will do

Research voice deepfake detection, audio provenance and anti-spoofing methods

Identify and prepare genuine and synthetic speech datasets

Process real-world and telephone-quality audio

Run training, fine-tuning and model-evaluation experiments

Investigate cross-domain and cross-speaker generalization issues

Analyze false positives and false negatives

Test preprocessing, calibration and audio-window aggregation methods

Maintain reproducible experiment logs and technical documentation

Support future academic papers and research submissions

Help translate research findings into practical product improvements

Requirements

Currently pursuing a PhD in a relevant technical discipline or already has a PhD

Hands-on experience with audio or speech machine learning

Strong Python skills and experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow

Understanding of signal processing, audio preprocessing and model evaluation

Ability to read academic papers and implement research methods

Organized, proactive and comfortable working independently

Preferred experience

Voice deepfake detection, anti-spoofing or speaker verification

ASVspoof, Common Voice or similar audio datasets

Access to university laboratory or GPU resources

Academic writing and publication experience

Interest in cybersecurity, responsible AI and financial services

This is an equity-only opportunity for a PhD candidate who wants to contribute to applied research with real commercial and societal impact. Publication authorship will be based on substantive research contributions.