Security Engineering Internship

About The Company

World is at the forefront of building a real human network, designed to accelerate people in the age of AI. As the digital landscape evolves with bots and autonomous agents, World provides a trusted, privacy-preserving method to confirm human identity. Our innovative products include the Orb for physical verification, World ID for private proof of identity, and the World App to enable and distribute new applications built on this technology, collectively forming a new layer for the AI internet.

We are a rapidly expanding network, with over 17 million verified World ID users across 160 countries, completing more than 350,000 verifications weekly. The World App is recognized as one of the most widely used wallets globally. Developers are actively integrating World ID to foster safer online environments and create unique spaces for real human interaction and recognition.

Founded in 2019 and launched globally in 2023, World boasts a diverse team of over 400 professionals specializing in hardware, software, AI, cryptography, mobile engineering, and global operations. Our team members bring expertise from leading organizations such as OpenAI, Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Google, Stripe, Meta, Coinbase, Palantir, and MIT Media Lab. We are proudly supported by prominent investors including a16z, Khosla Ventures, Bain Capital Crypto, Blockchain Capital, Variant, Tiger Global, and Coinbase Ventures, alongside influential operators and founders in fintech and AI.

World's groundbreaking work has earned recognition from TIME Magazine (cover feature), Fast Company (Next 5 in Fintech), and Bloomberg. Our advancements in identity, cryptography, AI, and global hardware deployment have been highlighted by The New York Times, Bankless, and TechCrunch. Additionally, our leadership is featured in the Time AI 100. Discover our latest product developments at our Unwrapped event.

About The Team

Our multidisciplinary Detection & Response team is dedicated to safeguarding the global-scale World ID service from attacks. This service integrates mobile applications (Android and iOS), the unique Orb hardware, cloud-hosted APIs, and operations on the Ethereum-based Worldchain blockchain to deliver privacy-preserving “proof of human.” The team applies a broad spectrum of expertise, including mobile device security, hardware security, cloud infrastructure, application security, intrusion detection, machine learning/AI, blockchain security, and incident response, to tackle complex and novel security challenges.

This team collaborates closely with core technology development teams, recognizing that Detection & Response and Privacy are fundamental pillars of the World Network.

About The Role

As a Security Engineering Intern in our Detection & Response team, you will contribute to the development of a distributed analytics system. Your primary project will involve executing a smart contract that incentivizes third parties to run specific code against particular datasets, publish the results, and cryptographically prove the correctness of the calculation. This initiative represents a pioneering application of blockchain-based verifiable compute to Detection Engineering.

This project is currently in its early stages, with expectations aligned to what can be achieved within an internship timeframe. You will play a crucial role in launching a challenging and intriguing project. Our goal is to build an entirely new automated detection and response system designed to protect over 17 million verified World ID users processing millions of daily identity and financial transactions. This system will need to scale rapidly to secure billions of users utilizing both trusted and untrusted hardware, much of which will not be owned by World. We aim to publish audit events to the public blockchain to ensure the highest levels of transparency and trust for the World ID system, enabling decentralized detection & response based on these logs. All these efforts will be undertaken while upholding the strongest possible privacy protections.

About You

• Studying, researching, or working with verifiable compute technologies (e.g., zero-knowledge ML or zero-knowledge virtual machines).
• Some exposure to Rust programming.
• Strong critical thinking and communication skills.
• Comfortable collaborating cross-functionally with various teams.
• Energized by a fast-paced, collaborative work environment.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Prior hands-on experience with RiscZero, Succinct, Boundless, or other zkVM frameworks.

If you don't believe you meet every single criterion but are still interested, we encourage you to apply. We value enthusiasm and potential.

Key skills/competency

• Security Engineering
• Verifiable Compute
• Blockchain Security
• Rust Programming
• Detection & Response
• Privacy Preservation
• Smart Contracts
• Distributed Systems
• Cryptographic Proofs
• Zero-Knowledge Proofs