Senior Principal - Red Team Engineer
United States2h ago
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Key details
- Salary
- $141K–$325K/yr
- Location
- United States
- Work style
- Remote
- Level
- Lead / Staff+
- Job type
- Full-time
- Experience
- 9–12 yrs
- Function
- Software engineering
- Focus area
- Infrastructure / Cloud
- Posted
- 2h ago
Skills
About the role
This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Principal – Red Team Engineer based in the United States.
The Senior Principal – Red Team Engineer will play a leading role in advancing enterprise cybersecurity through sophisticated offensive security research, Red Team operations, and Purple Team engagements. This position involves planning and executing complex adversary emulation campaigns to identify vulnerabilities, demonstrate realistic attack paths, and strengthen security defenses across enterprise and cloud environments. You will take ownership of high-impact security engagements, from initial scoping and technical planning through execution, remediation validation, and executive reporting. Working alongside detection and defensive security teams, you will translate offensive findings into measurable improvements in threat detection and response capabilities. You will also drive innovation by developing custom security tools, researching emerging attack techniques, and leveraging AI-powered automation to enhance cybersecurity operations. This is an opportunity for a highly experienced security professional to influence enterprise security strategy while contributing to advanced research and technical innovation in a remote-first environment.
Accountabilities:
- Lead Red Team operations: Plan and execute complex, full-scope adversary emulation campaigns across enterprise environments, applying advanced offensive security methodologies and disciplined operational practices to assess organizational security resilience.
- Drive Purple Team engagements: Collaborate with defensive security and detection engineering teams to validate security controls, evaluate detection coverage, identify defensive gaps, and translate offensive testing results into actionable security improvements.
- Own end-to-end security engagements: Manage the technical lifecycle of Red Team and Purple Team projects, including engagement scoping, test planning, execution, remediation verification, and the delivery of comprehensive technical reports.
- Conduct advanced security research: Investigate emerging vulnerabilities, attack techniques, exploitation methods, and security weaknesses across enterprise infrastructure, cloud platforms, and application environments.
- Develop custom offensive security tools: Design, build, and maintain specialized tooling to improve testing capabilities, automate security research, and advance the team's technical effectiveness.
- Leverage AI for cybersecurity operations: Build and operate AI-powered orchestration frameworks, automation layers, and tools around large language models (LLMs) and agentic systems to support activities such as reconnaissance, security research, vulnerability discovery, and engagement reporting.
- Assess cloud and enterprise environments: Evaluate security weaknesses across cloud infrastructure, identity systems, networking, storage, serverless environments, infrastructure-as-code, and common operating systems.
- Evaluate security controls and defenses: Assess the effectiveness of network and endpoint security technologies, including web application firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and endpoint detection and response solutions.
- Produce high-quality technical deliverables: Create detailed security assessment reports, proof-of-concept documentation where appropriate, remediation verification summaries, and recommendations that support measurable risk reduction.
- Drive continuous security improvement: Contribute to stronger detection and response capabilities, reduce recurring security issues, and improve the overall effectiveness of enterprise cybersecurity programs.
- Education and professional experience: Master's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience. At least 9 years of cybersecurity experience, with substantial specialization in offensive security.
- Advanced offensive security expertise: Demonstrated hands-on proficiency in at least three of the following technical domains, with Red Team Operations or Red Team Development being mandatory:
- Red Team Operations.
- Red Team Development, including offensive tooling and security research.
- Exploit development and vulnerability discovery, including zero-day research.
- Reverse engineering.
- Detection engineering.
- Penetration testing.
- AI-enabled offensive security.
- Red Team and Purple Team experience: Proven ability to plan, lead, and execute sophisticated security engagements, demonstrating strong technical judgment, operational discipline, and the ability to translate findings into meaningful defensive improvements.
- Cloud security expertise: Practical experience assessing cloud workloads and configurations across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including identity and access management, networking, storage, serverless services, and infrastructure-as-code.
- Operating system and platform knowledge: Strong technical familiarity with Linux and Windows server and client environments. Experience with macOS is considered an advantage.
- Programming and automation: Strong development skills in Python, Go, Rust, C/C++, or equivalent programming languages, with the ability to build custom security tools, automate testing, and investigate emerging attack techniques.
- Infrastructure and security control assessment: Experience deploying and managing offensive testing infrastructure and evaluating the effectiveness of network and host-based security controls, including WAF, IDS/IPS, and EDR technologies.
- AI and automation capabilities: Familiarity with LLMs, agentic systems, AI orchestration frameworks, and their application to advanced cybersecurity research and operational workflows.
- Security frameworks and methodologies: Knowledge of recognized security frameworks and standards, including MITRE ATT&CK, OWASP Top 10, OWASP ASVS, OWASP WSTG, and STRIDE, particularly in web and cloud security contexts.
- Development pipeline security: Experience assessing CI/CD environments and developer pipelines, including GitHub and GitLab runners, build agents, and infrastructure-as-code security scanning.
- Professional certifications: Certifications such as OSCP, OSCE, GPEN, GWAPT, CRTP, OSWE, or equivalent qualifications are preferred.
- Research and industry contributions: Contributions to security research, responsible vulnerability disclosure, bug bounty programs, credited CVEs, technical publications, security blogs, or publicly available security tools and code are highly valued.
- Continuous learning: Evidence of ongoing professional development, including participation in advanced technical training and specialized security courses.
- Communication and collaboration: Strong analytical, documentation, and communication skills, with the ability to present complex technical findings clearly and collaborate effectively with offensive security, defensive security, and engineering teams.
- Competitive base salary: Annual salary ranging from $141,000 to $325,000 in eligible locations, including Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia. California compensation ranges from $160,000 to $325,000.
- Additional incentives: Eligibility for variable compensation in addition to base salary.
- Comprehensive healthcare and wellbeing: Access to a broad range of benefits designed to support physical, financial, and emotional wellbeing for employees and their families.
- Fully remote flexibility: Remote/teleworker arrangement, allowing you to primarily work from home.
- Professional development: Access to career development programs, specialized learning opportunities, and resources to support technical expertise and professional growth.
- Career advancement: Opportunities to develop as a senior technical expert or explore other career paths within the organization.
- Inclusive work environment: A workplace that values diverse backgrounds, individual contributions, collaboration, and equal opportunities.
- Cutting-edge technology exposure: Opportunities to work on advanced offensive security research, enterprise-scale cybersecurity challenges, AI-powered security automation, and emerging technologies.
- Meaningful technical impact: The opportunity to influence security strategy, improve enterprise defense capabilities, and contribute to measurable cybersecurity improvements.
- Accessibility support: Reasonable accommodations are available to qualified applicants throughout the recruitment and interview process.