Cybersecurity Research Expert – Offensive Security & Vulnerability Research (Train AI Models Part Time!)

hackajob is collaborating with Mercor to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.

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.