Cybersecurity Research Expert – Offensive Security & Vulnerability Research

Current Mercor opportunity: Cybersecurity Research Expert – Offensive Security & Vulnerability Research appeared in the live Mercor Explore catalog and was rechecked from the current role page on 2026-09-18.

We're looking for highly accomplished Cybersecurity Research Experts to help evaluate cutting-edge AI systems in advanced security reasoning, vulnerability analysis, exploit development, and secure software engineering. This project is ideal for practitioners with a strong track record in offensive security research and publicly recognised technical contributions.

### What You'll Do

• Evaluate AI-generated analyses of complex cybersecurity scenarios, exploits, and vulnerability reports.

• Review technical writeups for correctness, exploitability, and mitigation quality.

• Validate vulnerability root-cause analysis across software, operating systems, networking, cloud, and web applications.

• Provide structured feedback on security reasoning, exploit chains, and defensive recommendations.

• Contribute to benchmark development for advanced AI security capabilities.

### Ideal Background

We are looking for candidates with multiple of the following credentials:

• Member of a top-ranked Capture The Flag (CTF) team with demonstrated competitive achievements.

• Discoverer or co-author of CVEs affecting widely used open-source or commercial software.

• Publicly recognised bug bounty researcher with findings accepted by major programs (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, GitHub, Mozilla, Chromium, Kubernetes, Linux Foundation, etc.).

• Research experience at a well-respected security laboratory or academic research group (e.g., KAIST Security Lab, SSLab, university security research groups, or equivalent industry research organisations).

• Author of high-quality security research publications, conference papers, or widely cited technical writeups.

• Strong understanding of exploit development, reverse engineering, binary analysis, vulnerability research, operating systems, networks, web security, or cryptography.

### Preferred Qualifications

• Professional experience in offensive security, application security, vulnerability research, product security, or security engineering.

• Experience with reverse engineering tools such as IDA Pro, Ghidra, Binary Ninja, or Radare2.

• Familiarity with fuzzing, symbolic execution, static analysis, or dynamic analysis frameworks.

• Experience with Linux internals, Windows internals, browser security, cloud security, embedded security, or mobile security.

• Strong programming skills in C/C++, Rust, Python, Go, or Java.

• Excellent written communication and ability to explain complex security concepts clearly.

### Nice to Have

• Hall of Fame recognition from major bug bounty programs.

• Black Hat, DEF CON, USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, NDSS, or similar conference presentations/publications.

• Maintainer or significant contributor to well-known open-source security tools.

• Offensive Security certifications (OSCP, OSEP, OSCE3), GIAC certifications, or equivalent credentials.

### Why Join?

• Work on frontier AI models tackling real-world cybersecurity problems.

• Collaborate with leading researchers on advanced security evaluation tasks.

• Help shape the next generation of AI systems for cybersecurity.

Current source check: Active on Mercor as of 2026-09-18. Confirm pay, hours, location eligibility, and screening steps in Mercor’s application flow.

Apply through the Mercor link in this listing. WorkAppily is not the hiring employer and does not control role availability or hiring decisions.