Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. 1Kosmos builds identity verification and authentication technology for enterprises and government organizations. The Technical Research Consultant will research identity-verification providers and data sources, test APIs and SDKs, build lightweight prototypes and research automation, assess regulatory and operational constraints, and provide evidence-based recommendations to Product and related stakeholders.
Responsibilities
- Identify identity-verification, authoritative-data, eID, document-verification, biometric, liveness, deepfake, fraud-signal, bank-verification, and related providers that can fill specific product requirements
- Research regional options where global vendors may have weak coverage, with near-term emphasis on markets such as Southeast Asia and other priority international regions
- Determine whether a provider is technically available and operationally usable, including production eligibility, onboarding requirements, per-customer approvals, geographic restrictions, licensing, minimums, and commercial dependencies
- Separate vendor claims from verified evidence by using primary sources, technical documentation, independent benchmarks, public test results, standards, and hands-on validation
- Integrate third-party REST APIs and SDKs in a sandbox or test environment using lightweight Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Postman, curl, or similar tools
- Build small proof-of-concept applications or test harnesses that demonstrate what a provider actually returns, how difficult it is to integrate, and where failure modes appear
- Evaluate API authentication, request/response structure, error handling, webhooks, latency, rate limits, sandbox-to-production differences, observability, documentation quality, and integration effort
- Prototype fraud and biometric concepts when useful, such as connecting a deepfake-detection API and comparing its results against public or independently available test data
- Document enough implementation detail that Product or Engineering can reproduce the test without starting over
- Research how identity verification works in specific countries, including available government eIDs, authoritative sources, physical documents, identity attributes, and approved access models
- Translate business requests into technical and vendor-evaluation criteria. Example: a request to support Singpass should become a documented view of integration options, approval requirements, entity prerequisites, production constraints, data flows, and implementation choices
- Identify privacy, consent, data-residency, retention, licensing, certification, and local-government constraints that could affect architecture or time to market
- Flag operational dependencies early, including manual-review requirements, provider onboarding lead times, customer-specific approvals, or compliance reassessment implications
- Maintain a structured view of provider coverage by country, document type, electronic ID, authoritative source, and capability
- Track new or changed identity-document templates and provider support so Product can anticipate verification failures rather than discover them only through customer escalations
- Monitor vendor release notes, government identity programs, standards, API changes, and relevant product announcements, recording both the source and effective date
- Create concise periodic updates that tell Product what changed, why it matters, and whether action is required
- Build lightweight research agents or automated workflows that monitor defined sources, detect changes, preserve citations, and produce reviewable summaries
- Automate repetitive research tasks such as checking supported-document lists, comparing vendor coverage, identifying newly released document templates, or watching government digital-ID programs
- Design workflows so a human can verify the source and reasoning before research is used for a product or compliance decision
- Create a repeatable vendor scorecard covering coverage, technical fit, evidence quality, integration complexity, fraud controls, operational model, regulatory constraints, data handling, commercial considerations, scalability, and vendor maturity
- Recommend whether 1Kosmos should integrate, partner, defer, or continue researching, and clearly state the evidence and assumptions behind the recommendation
- Present findings in concise written briefs and working sessions with Product, Engineering, Security/Compliance, and other stakeholders
- Maintain a research repository so prior work can be reused for roadmap planning, customer requirements, RFPs, and future vendor evaluations
- Evaluate bank-account and identity-data providers such as Plaid for verification use cases and determine the most appropriate integration pattern
- Identify and test document-verification and authoritative-source providers for Southeast Asian markets
- Research Singpass and other national eID programs, including production approval requirements and customer-specific constraints
- Evaluate eID and mobile-ID aggregation options and determine where direct government integrations versus aggregators make sense
- Compare DMV/AAMVA-like authoritative-source options and third-party aggregators for U.S. identity verification
- Prototype and evaluate deepfake or biometric fraud-detection providers, including tools such as Paravision or comparable specialist vendors
- Build a repeatable process for detecting new identity-document templates and tracking when upstream providers add support
Skills
- Strong hands-on experience consuming third-party APIs and SDKs. You can go from documentation to a working test without needing a full engineering team
- Comfort with Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or a similar scripting language, plus REST/JSON, OAuth or API-key authentication, Postman, curl, Git, and basic cloud tooling
- Excellent technical research skills and the discipline to distinguish primary evidence, independent testing, vendor marketing claims, and your own conclusions
- Experience translating ambiguous business questions into structured evaluation criteria and defensible recommendations
- Strong written communication. Your research should be concise enough for an executive while detailed enough for an engineer to reproduce the work
- Experience presenting technical findings to Product, walking Engineering through API test results, and discussing regulatory constraints with Security or Compliance
- High agency and comfort working independently in an environment where priorities can change quickly
- Dependable 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 evaluating biometric, liveness, presentation-attack, deepfake, or document-fraud technology
- Experience researching international privacy, data-residency, consent, identity, or digital-government requirements
- Experience building AI-assisted research agents, monitoring pipelines, web-scraping or change-detection workflows, or other research automation
- Prior work in consulting, product management, solutions engineering, technical product research, or technical competitive intelligence
Benefits
- Three-to-six month consulting engagement
- Remote work
- Reliable overlap with the U.S. Eastern time zone for Product-team collaboration
Company Overview