Cyber Research Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Clearance: TS/SCI w/ Poly

Location: Reston, VA (preferred)

Job-Type: Full-Time

Target Salary Range*: $190,000 - $235,000

*This represents the potential salary range for this position depending on education level, years of experience and/or certifications in addition to other position specific requirements which may impact salary

Job Summary:

We are seeking a highly skilled Cyber Research Engineer with deep technical expertise in Offensive Cyber Operations and low-level software engineering. In this role, you will be a recognized expert, leading the design, development, and deployment of advanced cyber capabilities targeting modern computing environments, embedded systems, and hardened platforms. This position requires visionary approach to research with a keen ability to anticipate emerging cyber challenges and pioneer innovative solutions, and a deep understanding of cyber threat landscapes, exploit development, reverse engineering, mission-oriented software tooling, and adversarial tactics to drive cutting-edge research and prototype novel solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and execute advanced offensive cyber research initiatives, including vulnerability discovery, exploit development across userland, kernel, and firmware layers, and the design of novel offensive capabilities.
• Design, develop, and maintain sophisticated, robust, and scalable offensive security software, tools, and frameworks, with an emphasis on low-level programming for diverse and potentially constrained environments (bare-metal, embedded, real-time systems).
• Conduct in-depth reverse engineering of binaries, firmware, and proprietary protocols to understand system behavior, identify vulnerabilities, analyze malware, and inform capability development.
• Prototype and iterate on tooling and methodologies in support of red teaming and Cyber Network Operations (CNO), including exploring automation and AI-driven techniques.
• Develop and implement software that can evade detection and maintain persistence on target systems.
• Analyze and model adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to simulate real-world cyber threats and inform offensive and defensive strategies.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior engineers and peers on offensive cyber techniques, research methodologies, and software development best practices.
• Collaborate effectively with multidisciplinary teams (including hardware engineers, network analysts, defensive security, data scientists, and mission planners) to identify vulnerabilities, develop innovative techniques, and integrate research findings into operational platforms.
• Author comprehensive technical documentation, Concepts of Operations (CONOPs), and briefings for both highly technical and operational audiences.
• Contribute to strategic research initiatives and present findings at internal and external technical forums and conferences.
• Stay current with the latest developments in offensive cyber techniques, emerging threats, and relevant software technologies to continuously enhance capabilities and platform integration.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Cybersecurity, or a related technical field. 7+ years of experience in cybersecurity with a strong focus on offensive security research and software development in a security context.
• Expert-level proficiency in C/C++. Strong software development skills for building robust, maintainable, and sophisticated security tools and capabilities. Proficiency in additional relevant languages such as Python and Rust.
• Deep understanding of operating system internals (Linux, embedded RTOS, Android OS), computer architecture, and low-level programming concepts. Experience with kernel or hypervisor-level development.
• Extensive hands-on experience with industry-standard reverse engineering tools (e.g., IDA Pro, Ghidra, Binary Ninja, Jeorn) and techniques for analyzing binaries, firmware, and proprietary protocols.
• Demonstrated expertise in identifying, analyzing, and exploiting complex vulnerabilities (including memory corruption, privilege escalation, sandbox escapes) across multiple platforms, architectures (e.g., x86, ARM, MIPS, RISC-V, microcontrollers), and environments (modern OSes, embedded systems). Hands-on development experience for non-traditional or highly constrained targets.
• Strong understanding of network stack and protocols, security vulnerabilities, common attack methods, and experience with network protocol manipulation and covert communications.
• Familiarity with advanced adversarial cybersecurity strategies.
• Ability to effectively communicate complex technical information, research findings, and operational concepts both verbally and in writing to diverse audiences.
• Experience leading technical projects or mentoring junior engineers.
• Eligible for high-level security clearance Preferred Qualifications:
• Active TS/SCI security clearance with Polygraph.
• Prior experience supporting Cyber Network Operations (CNO) in air-gapped, RF-contested, or denied environments.
• Experience with hardware interfaces (JTAG, UART, SPI) and embedded system debugging and exploitation.
• Background in adversarial environments, such as participation in red teaming, wargaming, or Capture-the-Flag (CTF) competitions.
• Familiarity with cloud-based systems and infrastructure, containerization, orchestration technologies, and DevOps practices and tools.
• Demonstrated experience with offensive techniques targeting cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence concepts and their application to cybersecurity, including adversarial machine learning.
• Proven contributions to the security community, including publications, patents, recognized contributions to open-source offensive security tools, published research in top-tier conferences/journals, or bug bounty recognition.