Bitcoin Security Engineer

About the role

The Bitcoin Security Engineer is a hands‑on, deeply technical individual‑contributor role responsible for adversarially assessing every layer of Strategy’s bitcoin security posture—from cryptographic key material and signing ceremonies to custodians, exchanges, and supporting infrastructure. This role validates the security architecture set by the Director of Bitcoin Security by probing wallets, hardware, protocols, and custodial controls to find weaknesses before adversaries do, and producing rigorous research and analysis that raises the security bar across the bitcoin custody ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Plan and execute hands‑on penetration tests against Strategy’s bitcoin wallet architectures (single‑sig, multisig, MPC, hardware‑wallet deployments), targeting key generation, storage, backup, and recovery workflows for exploitable weaknesses.
• Design and run adversarial simulations of signing ceremonies, quorum policies, and transaction‑approval workflows, testing for insider‑threat, social‑engineering, collusion, and operational‑security failure modes across cold, warm, and hot storage tiers.
• Perform security testing of hardware wallets, HSMs, secure elements, and air‑gapped devices, including firmware analysis, fault‑injection and side‑channel research, entropy and RNG validation, and supply‑chain tamper assessment.
• Test Bitcoin node, RPC, and transaction‑construction surfaces, including PSBT handling, fee and RBF logic, transaction malleability, address‑generation and derivation‑path validation, and P2P/mempool‑facing attack surfaces.
• Assess the security of blockchain‑adjacent infrastructure Strategy relies on, including smart contracts, tokenization platforms, bridges, oracles, and on‑chain settlement logic, for vulnerabilities and abuse conditions.
• Lead deep offensive and analytical research into the security posture of Strategy’s custodians and prospective custodians, pressure‑testing their key‑management, segregation, access‑control, and recovery claims through structured technical due diligence and adversarial threat modeling.
• Build and maintain comprehensive threat models and attack‑surface inventories for Strategy’s end‑to‑end bitcoin custody chain, prioritizing findings by realistic adversary capability and financial impact.
• Produce clear, reproducible penetration‑test reports with proof‑of‑concept exploits, severity ratings, and pragmatic remediation guidance; partner with engineering and custody teams to validate fixes through retesting.
• Conduct original research into emerging bitcoin, cryptography, and blockchain vulnerabilities; responsibly disclose findings; and represent Strategy within the global bitcoin security community.
• Develop custom tooling, harnesses, fuzzers, and test automation to make bitcoin and custody security testing repeatable, scalable, and continuous.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required in Computer Science, Cryptography, Information Security, Engineering, or a related field; Master’s degree in a relevant discipline strongly preferred. Equivalent demonstrable offensive‑security experience will be considered.
• 6+ years of hands‑on penetration testing, red‑team, vulnerability research, or exploit‑development experience, with a substantial portion focused on cryptographic systems, financial systems, or blockchain and bitcoin environments.
• One or more recognized offensive‑security or blockchain‑security credentials strongly preferred (e.g., OSCP, OSEP, OSED; GPEN, GXPN, GWAPT, GREM; CRTO, CRTL; Certified Blockchain Security Professional).
• Demonstrated hands‑on ability to test Bitcoin protocol, wallet, and node implementations, covering key management, multisignature and MPC schemes, PSBT and transaction construction, derivation paths, and on‑chain and off‑chain attack surfaces.
• Deep understanding of cryptographic primitives and protocols, including digital signatures, hashing, key generation, entropy sources, secure key storage, and hardware‑backed security mechanisms, and how they fail in real deployments.
• Experience adversarially assessing Bitcoin custody solutions, including multisignature and hardware wallets, HSMs, recovery mechanisms, signing ceremonies, and operational security controls, with the ability to evaluate third‑party custodian security claims.
• Proven ability to conduct and document original security research and structured technical analysis of custodian, cryptographic, and blockchain systems, translating findings into defensible risk and remediation conclusions.
• Proficiency in one or more of Python, Rust, C/C++, or Go, with the ability to build custom test tooling, fuzzers, and proof‑of‑concept exploits.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate highly technical offensive findings into actionable guidance for engineers, custody teams, executives, and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated success operating as a senior individual contributor with high autonomy and sound judgment, and the discipline to handle highly sensitive systems and material safely, ethically, and within authorized scope.

Pay

The base salary range for this role is $103,900 to $186,900 and represents a good faith estimate of the range at the time of posting. Strategy maintains broad salary ranges to account for differences in skills, experience, qualifications, internal peer equity, market conditions, and business needs. Candidates are typically placed within the range based on these factors, and it is not common for individuals to be hired at or near the top of the range. The posted range reflects base salary only.

Benefits

• Eligible employees may participate in bonus programs.
• Eligible employees may participate in sales incentives.
• Eligible employees may receive equity awards.
• Eligible employees receive comprehensive benefits.

Schedule

Full‑time, in‑person position based at the Strategy Office in Tysons Corner, Virginia.