Applied Cryptography Researcher (Research Coding Tasks)
Listing checked October 30, 2026 · pay as published by AfterQuery
Key details
- Pay
- $80/hr
- Location
- Remote
- Job type
- contract
- Posted
- October 29, 2026
Overview
AfterQuery seeks applied cryptography researchers to turn recent papers with released code into coding tasks for frontier AI agents. You strip out the code behind a paper's central result, then package the remaining project as a challenge an agent must solve against the authors' own benchmarks. Work spans FHE, MPC, zero-knowledge, PIR, and lattice-based or post-quantum implementations, with remote scheduling and asynchronous collaboration. Pay is $80/hr or $200 per approved task, and each task takes a few hours.
What You'll Do6
- Select a recent applied cryptography paper with released code, with a strong preference for your own publication.
- Remove the implementation that carries the paper's main contribution and keep the rest of the codebase intact for the task.
- Write a task statement that asks an AI agent to rebuild the missing contribution and match or surpass the authors' reported results.
- Define held-out evaluation workloads and set pass thresholds for each metric.
- Build a hidden reference solution and a second working solution that proves the benchmark can be beaten.
- Review agent attempts against your task and judge whether each attempt clears the bar.
Requirements6
- Published research in applied cryptography at CRYPTO, Eurocrypt, CCS, USENIX Security, PETS, or a comparable venue.
- Released code for at least one paper through GitHub or an artifact link.
- PhD in computer science or a related field, completed or in progress.
- First-author papers that report measured gains over a baseline are a plus.
- Comfort with Docker and reproducible benchmark setups.
- Depth in FHE, MPC, zero-knowledge, PIR, or lattice-based and post-quantum implementations.
Who Should Apply
PhD researchers and research engineers in applied cryptography who have published at CRYPTO, Eurocrypt, CCS, USENIX Security or PETS and released code for at least one paper. Strong fits can rebuild a paper's core contribution, set reproducible benchmarks, and review AI agent attempts.
Salary Insight
The listing sets pay at $80/hr and $200 per approved task. Each task takes a few hours, so the per-task figure aligns with the hourly rate when scoping stays tight; researchers with published code can judge effort from their own benchmark setup.
Required skills
How applying works
1. Pre-screen on NearSkill
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2. Finish on the employer’s site
We hand you to AfterQuery’s official application page to complete the form.
3. Wait for a response
The employer’s hiring team reviews applications and gets back to you.
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