Security Engineer (Application Security)

Join Trail of Bits, a leading cybersecurity firm, as a Security Engineer II in our Application Security practice. In this role, you will conduct security assessments of client software, identify and validate vulnerabilities, and develop custom tooling. You will own your analysis from discovery through client delivery and help clients understand and fix the issues you find. This position requires strong code-analysis skills, systems knowledge, and programming ability in relevant languages.

Responsibilities

• Independently lead assessments of substantial components, modules, or systems within client engagements and own the work from scoping through delivery.
• Find and validate vulnerabilities, establish root causes and exploitation paths, assess impact, and develop proof-of-concept code when appropriate.
• Design and build targeted tools, harnesses, tests, or automation that expand assessment coverage and improve repeatability.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including experience presenting technical conclusions to software engineers or clients and contributing effectively on a distributed team
• Strong code-analysis skills across unfamiliar and complex codebases, including tracing execution and data flow, identifying logic and implementation flaws, and reviewing the security implications of system design

Requirements

• Strong systems knowledge, including operating systems, IPC, privilege boundaries, system internals, and how applications interact with the platform around them
• Strong programming and debugging ability in at least two relevant languages, such as Rust, Go, C, C++, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, or similar languages used in security analysis and tool development
• Working knowledge of memory-corruption vulnerabilities and mitigations, including the ability to reason about exploit primitives, defensive mechanisms, and the practical security impact of implementation choices
• Demonstrated ability to independently scope and execute a code-level security-assessment workstream, prioritize attack surfaces, build or adapt tooling, document evidence, and deliver findings
• Repeated vulnerability-discovery experience. You can talk through vulnerabilities you personally found or validated, including how you identified them, established exploitation paths and impact, and distinguished them from false positives or low-impact defects
• Typically 2+ years of directly relevant experience in application security, vulnerability research, security-focused software engineering, or a closely related area. Relevant experience may include professional work, research, open-source contributions, or substantial academic or independent projects; demonstrated depth and independence matter more than a strict year count
• Active or recent CTF participation, competition results, or comparable hands-on security challenges

Contributions to open-source security tools, libraries, or research

• Experience with mobile application security, mobile system internals, or binary analysis on mobile platforms
• Experience assessing cloud platforms or infrastructure and working with tools such as Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, or Ansible
• Experience building security tools used by other engineers or across multiple assessments

Preferred

• Published vulnerability research, CVEs, responsible disclosures, bug bounty findings, conference presentations, or technical writeups
• Experience with kernel code, drivers, reverse engineering, fuzzing, symbolic execution, or other low-level systems work
• Experience leading client-facing technical discussions or mentoring other security engineers

Pay

USD 140,000 - 180,000