• Identify deep tech with operative dual-use character across the firm's seven sectors: from semiconductors and AI, post-quantum cryptographic hardware, secure enclaves, and radiation-hardened electronics; from space and aerospace, synthetic aperture radar, hyperspectral and SIGINT sensing, and earth observation intelligence; from robotics and unmanned systems, drone, counter-drone, and unmanned ground and marine systems; from communications, secure tactical communications and quantum key distribution; from materials, advanced materials with strategic applications.
• Monitor iDEX DISC challenges, ADITI scheme awards, DRDO Technology Development Fund disbursements, Make-II defence procurement contracts, Strategic Partner Model selections, defence PSU technology transfer announcements, and Raksha Udyog Corridor private sector participation in India.
• Track DARPA performer announcements, DIU contract awards, AFWERX, NavalX, and Army Applications Lab cohorts, and DARPA-to-commercial transitions in the US; NATO DIANA cohorts and EU EDF disbursements across Europe; UK DASA awards; Israel MAFAT and Innovation Authority defence allocations; Japan ATLA contracts and the Economic Security Promotion Act technology designations; Korea ADD and DAPA awards alongside the K-Defense ecosystem; Australia ASCA cohorts under AUKUS Pillar II; Taiwan NCSIST programmes; and China's open-source disclosures from CASC, CASIC, AVIC, and the civil-military fusion programmes where signal can be reliably extracted.
• Track specialist dual-use venture capital activity globally (Shield Capital, Lux Capital, In-Q-Tel, Speciale Invest's defence allocations), with parallel commercial deep tech formation monitored through the broader scouting pipeline and overlaid with dual-use classification where strategic crossover potential exists.

• Assess export control and investment screening exposure for technologies under evaluation across the regimes that determine deployment, customer, and exit pathway. India's SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies) classifications; US BIS Entity List, EAR, ITAR, OFAC sanctions, and the Foreign Direct Product Rule; China's Export Control Law, Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export, MOFCOM and MIIT licensing requirements, and Unreliable Entity List; EU Dual-Use Regulation 2021/821; the UK's Export Control Order under the Export Control Act 2002; Japan's FEFTA and the trilateral US-Japan-Netherlands semiconductor equipment restrictions; Korea's Foreign Trade Act and Strategic Items Export Control; Taiwan's Strategic High-Tech Commodities controls; the multilateral regimes (Wassenaar, MTCR, NSG, and Australia Group); and investment screening frameworks including CFIUS, EU FDI Screening, UK NSI Act, Japan's FEFTA inward investment review, and India's Press Note 3. Specific attention is required for deemed export rules, end-use and end-user controls, and country-specific sanctions programmes.
• Monitor Quad technology partnerships, including TRUST (Transforming Relationship Utilizing Strategic Technology, the current US-India CET framework and successor to iCET) and Japan-India and Australia-India bilateral technology dialogues; AUKUS Pillar II cooperation in AI, quantum, undersea, hypersonics, and electronic warfare where Indian industrial linkages exist; US-India defence industrial cooperation; and technology transfer dynamics under FMS, DCS, and India-specific co-production and co-development arrangements.
• Track global technology sovereignty trends across the firm's seven sectors, including semiconductor reshoring (US CHIPS Act, EU Chips Act, Japan's semiconductor revitalisation, Korea's K-Chips Act); battery and critical mineral supply chain restructuring (IRA-driven onshoring, EU Critical Raw Materials Act, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework supply chain pillar); rare earth and processing capacity buildout; biotechnology and bio-manufacturing sovereignty (US Bioeconomy Executive Order, EU biotech strategies); AI infrastructure and sovereign compute initiatives; satellite and space infrastructure buildout; and quantum-readiness and post-quantum cryptography migration — assessing India's relative positioning at each layer.

• Evaluate hardware supply chain integrity risks across communications, computing, sensing, and power electronics subsystems. Identify (coordinate with fellow on supply chains) single-source foreign component dependencies, counterfeit and substitution risks, end-of-life parts with unverified provenance, and the broader threat surface of hardware-level trojans, implants, and tampering in strategic and dual-use deployments.
• Assess software and firmware supply chain security, including dependency integrity, build pipeline provenance, signed binaries and SBOM practices, and firmware update and attestation mechanisms in embedded, OT/ICS, and edge-deployed systems.
• Assess cryptographic implementation security, including key management, side-channel attack resistance, post-quantum readiness, and the operational maturity of cryptographic agility for sensitive deployment contexts.
• Assess security architecture in AI and machine learning systems under review, including model inversion, adversarial perturbation, data poisoning, prompt injection, model extraction, training data provenance, and agentic system exploitation risks in sensitive deployment contexts.
• Assess operational technology and industrial control system security in energy, advanced manufacturing, infrastructure, and connected hardware investments, including segmentation architecture, protocol-level exposure, and firmware update governance.
• Assess biosecurity and dual-use biology risks in synthetic biology, gene synthesis, and biotechnology investments, including DNA synthesis screening practices, pathogen and select-agent handling protocols, and Biological Weapons Convention-relevant dual-use concerns where applicable.

• Bi-weekly dual-use technology intelligence notes: structured assessments of significant developments across India and the global ecosystems under coverage, with investment implications and dual-use classification where strategic crossover potential exists.
• Ecosystem mapping briefs of Indian strategic technology clusters, including iDEX and ADITI cohorts, defence PSU ecosystems, Defence Industrial Corridor formations, and emerging private sector dual-use deal flow across the Purus's seven sectors.
• Quarterly dual-use frontier technology outlook across the firm's seven sectors, integrating commercial deep tech formation, strategic capability developments, and security architecture trends with assessment of India's relative positioning.
• Strategic risk and policy watch summaries covering export control changes (US, China, EU, UK, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and India regimes), investment screening developments (CFIUS, NSI, Press Note 3, and equivalents), Quad and AUKUS Pillar II technology partnership updates, procurement policy shifts, and the security architecture concerns that determine deployment, customer, and exit pathway.
• Security architecture assessment briefs for priority investments, produced in coordination with the Technology Fellow, covering hardware and software supply chain integrity, cryptographic readiness, and sector-specific concerns including OT/ICS and biosecurity where applicable.

• Undergraduate or graduate training in engineering, computer science, applied physics, aerospace, robotics, materials science, or biotechnology; or in international relations, security studies, or public policy with substantive engagement in technology and strategic affairs.
• Technical backgrounds are preferred. Candidates from strategic studies, international relations, or policy backgrounds are encouraged to apply if they can demonstrate working familiarity with engineering, computing, or biological concepts relevant to dual-use systems across the firm's seven sectors of interest.
• Understanding of India's defence procurement and innovation ecosystem, including DAP 2020, iDEX and ADITI, Make-I and Make-II schemes, DRDO Technology Development Fund, the Strategic Partner Model, Defence Industrial Corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and Raksha Udyog Corridor private sector frameworks.
• Familiarity with global dual-use innovation ecosystems beyond India, including the US (DARPA, DIU, AFWERX, NavalX, Army Applications Lab), Europe (NATO DIANA, EU EDF, UK DASA), Israel (MAFAT, Innovation Authority), East Asia (Japan ATLA, Korea ADD and DAPA, Taiwan NCSIST), and Australia (ASCA under AUKUS Pillar II), with awareness of Chinese open-source disclosures from CASC, CASIC, AVIC, and civil-military fusion programmes.
• Awareness of geopolitical technology competition and the full export control landscape, including US EAR, ITAR, OFAC, BIS Entity List, and the Foreign Direct Product Rule; China's Export Control Law and Unreliable Entity List; EU Dual-Use Regulation 2021/821; UK post-Brexit export controls; Japan's FEFTA and trilateral US-Japan-Netherlands semiconductor restrictions; Korea's Foreign Trade Act; Taiwan's Strategic High-Tech Commodities controls; India's SCOMET framework; the multilateral regimes (Wassenaar, MTCR, NSG, Australia Group); and investment screening frameworks (CFIUS, EU FDI Screening, UK NSI Act, Japan's FEFTA inward review, India's Press Note 3).
• Working understanding of security architecture concerns across hardware and software supply chain integrity, cryptographic implementation including post-quantum readiness, AI and machine learning system security, OT and ICS security in industrial systems, and biosecurity considerations in synthetic biology and biotechnology investments.
• Ability to connect technological capability with strategic outcome, reasoning from engineering specification to national capability implication across the firm's seven sectors.
• Awareness of dual-use partnership and technology transfer frameworks relevant to India, including the Quad technology track, TRUST (the current US-India CET framework), AUKUS Pillar II linkages where Indian industry participates, and US-India defence industrial cooperation under FMS, DCS, and co-production arrangements.
• High discretion and professional integrity in handling strategically sensitive technical, commercial, and policy intelligence.

Purus Research invests in early stage Indian deep tech startups and, drawing on the same thematic intelligence, in listed equity markets in India and globally. Our focus is on frontier technologies that shape strategic industries: space and launch systems, semiconductors and advanced computing, defence and dual use systems, biotechnology and life sciences, advanced materials and critical minerals, and clean energy and climate technologies, with quantum technologies, next generation communications, and advanced manufacturing as cross cutting domains.

The most valuable opportunities in deep tech are enabled by researchers in university and government laboratories, veterans of corporate research divisions building independently, engineers in stealth mode startups, and serial founders identifying strategic industry shifts before they become publicly visible. Finding these opportunities requires a structured intelligence function, and that is what this fellowship is cogitated to deliver.

Deep tech refers to technologies rooted in substantial scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation, often combining advances across multiple disciplines, aiming to solve fundamental, hard problems of significant scope. Unlike shallow tech (software, apps, business model innovation), deep tech is grounded in breakthrough science or hard engineering, addressing problems that incremental approaches cannot reach.

The consequence of building on breakthrough science or hard engineering is structural. These technologies demand long R&D cycles, often a decade or more, and heavy upfront capital before commercial viability. Their primary risk is technical, not commercial. When they succeed, they produce structurally tenable companies, protected by engineering complexity, proprietary process, and intellectual property, that reconfigure entire industries.

Deep tech investing is fundamentally an intelligence problem. The technology is complex, the signals are early, and the commercial implications require domain specific judgement. This fellowship is designed to aid Purus solve that problem systematically.

The fellowship is organised around five interconnected roles that together form an integrated intelligence system, spanning the identification of early stage technology signals, technical and industrial assessment, and the synthesis of those signals into investment decisions across private and public markets.

Each fellow's work feeds directly into the others. A technology surfaced by the Scouting Fellow is assessed by the Technical Fellow, evaluated for manufacturability, in India, by the Supply Chain Fellow, classified for strategic relevance by the Dual Use Fellow, and interpreted for listed equity implications by the Markets Convergence Fellow. The outputs are structured, decision grade, and used directly in Purus's investment process.

Informed undergraduate and graduate students with strong technical, analytical, or policy foundations, and the curiosity to apply them to aid real investment decisions. The work is research heavy and operates across professional intelligence platforms, technical documentation, and primary literature, requiring the technical literacy to navigate these tools and the analytical discipline to extract decision grade insight from them. You do not need prior finance experience. You do need intellectual rigour, comfort with ambiguity, willingness to learn, technical fluency across multiple research environments, and the discipline to produce structured, accurate work under deadlines.