Georgios Portokalidis

The MadriSec group at the IMDEA Software Institute in Madrid is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to work with Prof. Georgios Portokalidis on software systems and software supply-chain security. The project aims to build practical techniques and tools that can detect malicious software updates and uncover undeclared, unpatched code in software repositories. The research begins with the Python ecosystem and brings together program analysis and LLM-assisted code review . The successful candidate will investigate suspicious commits, study the behavioural changes introduced by updates, and ground language-model-based review in program-analysis evidence. A further focus is robustness against evasion and prompt injection, alongside methods for detecting known-vulnerable code that has been copied or vendored into repositories. The role is not only about developing methods, but also about turning them into reusable analysis tools that can be evaluated and released for wider use. The postdoc will work in collaboration with researchers in cybersecurity and software engineering, and will contribute to mentoring students and interns within the group. The position is based at IMDEA Software Institute, an international research environment in Madrid with English as the working language.