Cybersecurity Research Expert at Mercor

Cybersecurity Research Expert – Offensive Security & Vulnerability Research | $200–$250/hr | Worldwide Remote

MERCOR is seeking highly accomplished Cybersecurity Research Experts to evaluate cutting-edge AI systems across advanced security reasoning, vulnerability analysis, exploit development, and secure software engineering. This is a unique opportunity for elite offensive security practitioners with publicly recognized technical contributions to help shape the future of AI-driven cybersecurity.

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 CTF team with demonstrated competitive achievements.
• Discoverer or co-author of CVEs affecting widely used open-source or commercial software.
• Publicly recognized bug bounty researcher with findings accepted by major programs (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, GitHub, Mozilla, Chromium, Kubernetes, Linux Foundation).
• Research experience at a well-respected security laboratory or academic research group (e.g., KAIST Security Lab, SSLab, or equivalent).
• 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, OS internals, networking, web security, or cryptography.

Preferred Qualifications

• Professional experience in offensive security, application security, vulnerability research, product security, or security engineering.
• Proficiency 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/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 with the ability to explain complex security concepts clearly.

Nice to Have

• Hall of Fame recognition from major bug bounty programs.
• Presentations or publications at Black Hat, DEF CON, USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, NDSS, or similar conferences.
• 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 challenges.
• Collaborate with leading researchers on advanced security evaluation tasks.
• Help define the next generation of AI systems built for cybersecurity.