Security Engineer, Application Security

About the role

Trail of Bits seeks a Security Engineer, Application Security within our growing Software Assurance practice. You will conduct comprehensive security assessments of client software with a focus on low-level code analysis, examining system architecture, security boundaries, access controls, and platform security mechanisms.

Responsibilities

• Conduct comprehensive low-level code security assessments across applications, examining vulnerabilities in system services, access control implementation, inter-process communication, and platform security controls while developing mitigation strategies
• Design and implement custom security tools for automated vulnerability detection, focusing on both application-specific and general security testing needs to bridge the gap between vulnerability research and application security
• Perform detailed architecture reviews and threat modeling of complex software systems and cloud environments, identifying potential security weaknesses in areas such as data flows, authentication mechanisms, and API security while providing remediation guidance
• Work directly with industry-leading teams to review their application infrastructure and architecture, helping secure their environments through deep technical analysis and recommendations
• Contribute to the advancement of application security, developing new methodologies and tools while staying up to date with the latest security developments in both traditional and emerging technology ecosystems

Requirements

• Application security assessment experience
• Direct experience conducting low-level code security assessments of complex software, identifying and mitigating application and system-level vulnerabilities
• Manual code review depth
• Hands-on experience performing manual code reviews to find vulnerabilities that automated tools miss
• Static and dynamic analysis fluency
• Experience using static and dynamic analysis tools as part of a deeper review process, including knowledge of where these tools fall short and how to extend them
• Binary analysis and reverse engineering
• Experience performing binary analysis and reverse engineering of compiled software
• Comfortable with disassemblers, decompilers, and the surrounding tooling
• Memory corruption vulnerabilities and mitigations
• Demonstrated experience identifying memory corruption vulnerabilities and reasoning about modern mitigations
• You understand the exploit primitives, not just the CWE category
• System internals and security boundaries
• Deep experience reasoning about system internals, IPC, access control implementations, and platform security boundaries in complex software
• Architecture review and threat modeling
• Experience performing architecture reviews and threat modeling of software systems and cloud environments, identifying weaknesses in data flows, authentication, and API design and proposing realistic remediation
• Security tool development
• Experience designing and building custom security tools for automated vulnerability detection
• You bridge vulnerability research and application security by shipping tools, not just consuming vendor outputs
• Programming proficiency across multiple languages
• Hands-on experience programming in two or more of Rust, Golang, Kotlin, Swift, Objective-C, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Ruby, C, or C++, used for both security analysis and tool development
• Communicating findings to technical stakeholders
• Experience translating complex security findings into clear, actionable recommendations for engineering and security teams

Qualifications

• Nice to have experience with Android, iOS, or macOS system internals
• Experience contributing to open source security tools, libraries, or research
• Experience publishing original vulnerability research, CVEs, or technical writeups
• Experience speaking at security conferences (DEF CON, Black Hat, BSides, OffensiveCon, RECon, etc.)
• Experience identifying security misconfigurations in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Experience collaborating on government-funded security research (DARPA, IARPA, ONR, etc.)

Benefits

• Competitive salary complemented by performance-based bonuses
• Fully company-paid insurance packages, including health, dental, vision, disability, and life
• A solid 401(k) plan with a 5% match of your base salary
• 20 days of paid vacation with flexibility for more, adhering to jurisdictional regulations
• Empowered Living: Competitive salary complemented by performance-based bonuses
• Fully company-paid insurance packages, including health, dental, vision, disability, and life
• A solid 401(k) plan with a 5% match of your base salary
• 20 days of paid vacation with flexibility for more, adhering to jurisdictional regulations
• Nurturing New Beginnings: 4 months of parental leave to cherish the arrival of new family members
• Company-sponsored all-team celebrations, including travel and accommodation, to foster community and recognize achievements
• Work & Life Enrichment: $1,000 Working-from-Home stipend to create a comfortable and productive home office
• Annual $750 Learning & Development stipend for continuous personal and professional growth
• Community Impact: Philanthropic contribution matching up to $2,000 annually