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Mercor Verified
remote · hourly

Cybersecurity Research Expert – Offensive Security & Vulnerability Research

$200–$250/hr
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Software Engineering hourly remote
Posted Aug 4, 2026

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.

Pay range
$200–$250/hr
40h/wk
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Earn $1,000 for each successful referral on this role.
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