Lead Vulnerability Researcher – Embedded & Telecom Security

National Physical Laboratory; England; Remote; GBP 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

The National Physical Laboratory seeks a Principal Vulnerability Researcher to drive advanced security research across embedded and networked systems. You’ll conduct hands‑on vulnerability discovery, reverse engineering, and fuzzing against real‑world devices, while guiding standards and tooling in a collaborative, engineering‑driven environment.

Based in Oxfordshire, this office‑based role may include relocation support.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in security or vulnerability research.
• Strong reverse engineering using static and dynamic analysis; Ghidra preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to efficiently conduct source code analysis on large codebases.
• Practical experience with fuzzing techniques, tooling, optimisation, and crash triage.
• Strong understanding of embedded systems, OS internals, and networking, including familiarity with underlying hardware.
• Expertise in embedded operating systems such as Linux and VxWorks.
• Proficiency in C/C++, Assembly and scripting languages such as Python or Lua.
• Eagerness to investigate and apply the latest AI tools and techniques.
• Practical experience with network or embedded devices.
• Candidates with published security research or CVEs are particularly encouraged.

Responsibilities

• Vulnerability research against real‑world network and embedded devices.
• Reverse engineering firmware and binaries to discover security vulnerabilities.
• Performing source code analysis to identify memory safety issues, logic flaws, and design weaknesses.
• Designing and running fuzzing campaigns against protocols, services and interfaces, on both the target device and via emulation.
• Working with a variety of CPU architectures such as ARM, MIPS, PowerPC and x86‑64.
• Providing technical leadership and setting research standards.
• Investigating how individual vulnerabilities can be chained to maximise system compromise.
• Developing and maintaining tools to improve personal and team productivity.
• Producing clear, high‑quality technical reports describing root cause and impact.

Skills

Security research

Reverse engineering

Source code analysis

Fuzzing

Embedded systems

Linux internals

VxWorks

C/C++

Assembly

Python

Lua

Ghidra

AI tools

Networking devices

CVEs

Tools

Ghidra

Job description

The National Physical Laboratory seeks a Principal Vulnerability Researcher to drive advanced security research across embedded and networked systems. You’ll conduct hands‑on vulnerability discovery, reverse engineering, and fuzzing against real‑world devices, while guiding standards and tooling in a collaborative, engineering‑driven environment.

Based in Oxfordshire, this office‑based role may include relocation support.