Senior Vulnerability Researcher Engineer (TS)

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Job Description: Parsons is seeking a Senior Vulnerability Research Engineer to join our team in support of advanced research and development contracts for the U.S. Government. You'll work on a small, highly technical team performing vulnerability research and reverse engineering against complex embedded and cyber-physical systems. The role involves taking research from initial target analysis through vulnerability discovery, exploit development, and integration into operational cyber capabilities.

As a Senior Vulnerability Research Engineer, you'll serve as an experienced hands-on technical contributor while helping guide less experienced researchers through complex technical challenges. You'll have the opportunity to work across the full vulnerability research lifecycle, develop new tools and techniques, and contribute to technically challenging research efforts involving software, firmware, hardware, and communications interfaces.

This is an onsite position based at the Cromulence-Parsons office in the historic downtown of Melbourne, Florida, on Florida's Space Coast. Work will be performed in both classified and unclassified environments.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Perform vulnerability research / reverse engineering (VR/RE) against a variety of embedded systems, including both hardware and software targets

• Analyze software, firmware, binaries, protocols, and system behavior to identify exploitable vulnerabilities

• Develop, test, debug, and integrate cyber tools such as exploits, cyber effects, and supporting research capabilities

• Apply static and dynamic analysis techniques using disassemblers, decompilers, debuggers, emulators, instrumentation, and custom tooling

• Analyze and bypass modern exploit mitigations and platform-specific security protections

• Develop scripts, utilities, harnesses, and automation to improve vulnerability discovery, analysis, and exploit development workflows

• Contribute to the development of emulation, instrumentation, fuzzing, and other advanced vulnerability research capabilities

• Independently execute significant portions of complex vulnerability research efforts while collaborating with other researchers on larger technical objectives

• Serve as a senior technical contributor and mentor, providing technical direction to junior researchers while remaining hands-on with vulnerability research and exploit development

• Review technical approaches, research results, exploit implementations, and supporting software developed by other team members

• Document technical findings, research methodologies, vulnerabilities, and developed capabilities for internal and customer-facing use

• Collaborate with customers and technical stakeholders to understand target systems, research objectives, and technical constraints

What Qualifications You'll Bring:

• U.S. Citizenship is required

• Bachelor's degree in a related technical field and 8+ years of professional related experience; Master's degree in a related field will be considered in lieu of 4 years' experience

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in vulnerability research, reverse engineering, exploit development, and/or cyber tool development

• Strong programming experience in languages such as C, C++, and Python

• Extensive experience with a decompiler/disassembler such as Ghidra (highly preferred), IDA Pro, or Binary Ninja

• Expertise analyzing at least one instruction set architecture, such as x86/x86-64, ARM/AArch64, or MIPS

• Experience using debuggers and other dynamic analysis tools to analyze complex software behavior

• Experience with modern exploitation techniques, tools, and methodologies

• Experience analyzing and bypassing modern exploit mitigations such as DEP/NX, ASLR, stack protections, CFI, and platform-specific protections

• Strong understanding of operating system fundamentals, memory management, processes, threads, and low-level software behavior

• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals and common network protocols

• Demonstrated ability to independently investigate complex technical problems and develop practical solutions

• Ability to communicate technical concepts, research findings, and implementation details to both researchers and technical stakeholders

What Desired Skills You'll Bring:

• 10+ years of experience in vulnerability research, reverse engineering, exploit development, and/or cyber tool development

• Experience reverse engineering embedded and Internet of Things (IoT) systems or cyber-physical devices such as Industrial Control Systems (ICS)

• Experience analyzing firmware, bootloaders, device drivers, kernels, and other low-level software components

• Experience with Windows Internals and/or Linux kernel-level programming

• Experience developing or enhancing emulation systems, such as QEMU, to enable advanced vulnerability research techniques

• Experience developing fuzzing harnesses, instrumentation, dynamic analysis tools, symbolic execution capabilities, or other research automation

• Experience reverse engineering proprietary network protocols, file formats, or communications interfaces

• Experience with additional operating systems such as Android, iOS, and macOS

• Advanced knowledge of networking protocols and network protocol analysis

• Experience developing software for Windows and/or Linux platforms

• Experience with multiple processor architectures

• Experience analyzing embedded hardware interfaces, peripherals, communications buses, or other cyber-physical system components

• Experience developing reusable vulnerability research tooling or automation

• Experience mentoring junior vulnerability researchers or providing technical direction on research efforts

• Demonstrated history of independently solving complex reverse engineering or exploitation problems

Security Clearance Requirement:

• An active Top Secret clearance is required to apply

• Must be able to obtain SCI and/or SAP accesses

Security Clearance Requirement: An active Top Secret security clearance is required for this position.

This position is part of our Federal Solutions team.

The Federal Solutions segment delivers resources to our US government customers that ensure the success of missions around the globe. Our intelligent employees drive the state of the art as they provide services and solutions in the areas of defense, security, intelligence, infrastructure, and environmental. We promote a culture of excellence and close-knit teams that take pride in delivering, protecting, and sustaining our nation's most critical assets, from Earth to cyberspace. Throughout the company, our people are anticipating what’s next to deliver the solutions our customers need now.

Salary Range: $112,200.00 - $196,400.00

Parsons is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other protected status.

We truly invest and care about our employee’s wellbeing and provide endless growth opportunities as the sky is the limit, so aim for the stars! Imagine next and join the Parsons quest—APPLY TODAY!

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