Technical Research Consultant, Identity Verification

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Identify providers for identity verification, authoritative data, eID, document verification, biometrics, liveness, deepfake detection, fraud signals, bank verification, and related product requirements.

• Conduct research on regional options, particularly focusing on Southeast Asian and other key international markets.

• Assess technical availability and operational usability, including production eligibility, onboarding processes, approvals, geographic restrictions, licensing, minimums, and commercial dependencies.

• Validate vendor claims utilizing primary sources, technical documentation, independent benchmarks, public test results, standards, and hands-on testing.

• Integrate and test third-party REST APIs and SDKs within sandbox or test environments.

• Develop proof-of-concept applications and test harnesses using lightweight scripting and API tools.

• Evaluate authentication processes, request/response structures, error handling, webhooks, latency, rate limits, differences between sandbox and production, observability, documentation, and integration efforts.

• Prototype fraud and biometric concepts and compare findings against public or independent test data.

• Document implementation details to ensure reproducibility of tests by Product and Engineering teams.

• Research identity systems specific to countries, including government eIDs, authoritative sources, documents, attributes, and approved access models.

• Translate business requests into technical specifications and vendor evaluation criteria.

• Identify constraints related to privacy, consent, data residency, retention, licensing, certification, and local government regulations.

• Highlight operational dependencies such as manual reviews, onboarding timeframes, customer approvals, and compliance reassessments.

• Maintain organized intelligence on provider coverage by country, document type, eID, authoritative source, and capabilities.

• Monitor document templates, vendor release notes, government identity programs, standards, API updates, and product announcements.

• Generate periodic updates detailing changes, impacts, and necessary actions.

• Build research agents and automated workflows to track sources, detect changes, preserve citations, and create reviewable summaries.

• Automate checks for supported documents, vendor coverage comparisons, document template detection, and monitoring of government digital IDs.

• Design research workflows that are verifiable by humans.

• Create repeatable vendor scorecards that encompass technical, operational, regulatory, commercial, scalability, and maturity factors.

• Recommend whether 1Kosmos should integrate, partner, defer, or continue further research.

• Present findings to Product, Engineering, Security/Compliance teams, and other stakeholders.

• Maintain a reusable research repository to assist with roadmap planning, customer requirements, RFPs, and future evaluations.

⛳️ Requirements

• Strong hands-on experience with third-party APIs and SDKs; able to transition from documentation to a functional test independently, without requiring a full engineering team.

• Proficiency in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, REST/JSON, OAuth or API-key authentication, Postman, curl, Git, and basic cloud tools.

• Excellent technical research abilities, capable of distinguishing between primary evidence, independent testing, vendor marketing claims, and valid conclusions.

• Experience in translating vague business inquiries into structured evaluation criteria and defensible recommendations.

• Strong written communication skills, producing research that is succinct for executives yet detailed enough for engineers to replicate.

• Experience in presenting technical findings to Product teams, guiding Engineering through API test results, and discussing regulatory limitations with Security or Compliance departments.

• High level of initiative and comfort working independently amidst shifting priorities.

• Reliable collaboration overlap with the U.S. Eastern time zone.

• Experience in identity verification, KYC/KYB, fraud prevention, biometrics, digital identity, cybersecurity, fintech, payments, or trust and safety.

• Familiarity with government eID programs, mobile driver licenses, authoritative identity data, document verification, or identity assurance standards.

• Experience in evaluating biometric, liveness, presentation attack, deepfake, or document fraud technologies.

• Experience researching international privacy, data residency, consent, identity, or digital government requirements.

• Background in building AI-assisted research agents, monitoring pipelines, web scraping, change detection workflows, or other forms of research automation.

• Previous roles in consulting, product management, solutions engineering, technical product research, or technical competitive intelligence.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.

• Flexible work hours and remote work options.

• Opportunities for professional growth and development.

• Collaborative and inclusive company culture.

• Generous paid time off and holiday policies.