We are seeking a motivated Cyber Software Engineer with strong foundations in offensive cyber, low‑level engineering, and hands‑on red‑team tooling. In this role, you will contribute to the design, development, and prototyping of advanced cyber capabilities targeting modern computing environments, embedded systems, and hardened platforms.

This position is ideal for an engineer who has demonstrated exceptional initiative in offensive tooling, hardware‑assisted security research, and adversary simulation, and who is ready to grow into a full‑spectrum cyber researcher under the guidance of other engineers.

The ideal candidate brings experience in red‑team operations, embedded systems experimentation, malware/tooling development, and AI‑assisted security research, with a strong desire to expand into vulnerability research, exploit development, and mission‑aligned capability engineering.

Primary Responsibilities

• Contribute to offensive cyber research initiatives, including vulnerability exploration, capability prototyping, and analysis of modern and embedded systems.

• Develop and maintain offensive security tools, red‑team automation frameworks, and mission‑oriented software components.

• Support reverse engineering tasks across binaries, firmware, and hardware‑adjacent systems to understand behavior, identify weaknesses, and inform capability development.

• Assist in designing and evaluating evasion‑resistant payloads, covert communication mechanisms, and persistence techniques for realistic adversary simulation.

• Prototype automation and AI‑driven approaches for reconnaissance, decision‑making, and red‑team workflow acceleration.

• Analyze adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to support realistic threat emulation and capability design.

• Collaborate with other engineers, hardware researchers, and mission teams to integrate software, embedded, and AI‑driven components into cohesive research prototypes.

• Document research findings, prototype behavior, and operational concepts for technical and operational audiences.

• Participate in internal red‑team exercises, capability evaluations, and iterative testing cycles to refine tools and methodologies.

• Stay current with emerging offensive techniques, hardware‑assisted attack vectors, and adversarial AI research trends.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related field. Degree must be completed by start date.

• Strong programming experience in C/C++ and Python, with demonstrated ability to build offensive tooling or low‑level software.

• Experience with reverse engineering fundamentals, including firmware analysis, hardware interfaces, or binary inspection.

• Hands‑on experience with red‑team operations, penetration testing, or adversary simulation.

• Familiarity with embedded systems, microcontrollers, or FPGA‑based development.

• Understanding of networking fundamentals, security vulnerabilities, and common attack techniques.

• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly in both written and verbal formats.

• Demonstrated initiative through research projects, open‑source contributions, or published work.

• US citizenship is required.

• Ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI with Polygraph clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• .Active TS/SCI security clearance with Polygraph.

• Experience developing or modifying offensive security tools.

• Familiarity with EDR evasion concepts, covert communications, or payload staging.

• Experience with hardware security research, side‑channel analysis, or hardware Trojan detection.

• Background in AI/ML applied to cybersecurity (e.g., neural architecture search, AI‑assisted detection, agentic tooling).

• Exposure to reverse engineering tools such as Ghidra, Binary Ninja, or IDA Pro.

• Experience with embedded debugging interfaces (JTAG, UART, SPI) or firmware modification.

• Contributions to security research communities, publications, or open‑source offensive tooling.

• Familiarity with cloud environments, containerization, or DevOps workflows.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.