DeFi Protocol Security Researcher - AI-Driven Guardrails

Openkrill; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Aave Labs is seeking a Protocol Security Researcher to bolster its internal security function. You will intersect smart contract security, protocol design, adversarial research, and AI-assisted review to reduce protocol risk continuously.

You will examine major changes before deployment, assess dependencies and integrations, and craft reusable security invariants and monitoring ideas for proactive defense.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of security experience in relevant field.
• Strong background in smart contract security and DeFi.
• Ability to review complex codebases and reason about protocol failures.
• Attacker mindset with ability to articulate exploit paths clearly.
• Experience with AI-assisted security tooling is a plus.
• Strong written communication for engineers and non-security stakeholders.
• Sound judgment on severity, exploitability, and material findings.

Responsibilities

• Review major protocol changes before audits or deployment.
• Perform attacker-driven analysis of contracts, mechanisms, and integrations.
• Influence security decisions through design discussions early.
• Identify risks in related systems: assets, oracles, adapters, dependencies.
• Contribute to AI-assisted security tooling and validate in reviews.
• Translate findings into reusable invariants and testing ideas.
• Collaborate with monitoring, incident response, and external auditors.

Skills

Security research experience

Smart contract security

Codebase review

Attacker mindset

DeFi mechanisms understanding

AI-assisted security tooling

Clear written communication

Risk assessment & trade-offs

Tools

Formal methods

Fuzzing

Invariant testing

Custom security tooling

Job description

Aave Labs is seeking a Protocol Security Researcher to bolster its internal security function. You will intersect smart contract security, protocol design, adversarial research, and AI-assisted review to reduce protocol risk continuously.

You will examine major changes before deployment, assess dependencies and integrations, and craft reusable security invariants and monitoring ideas for proactive defense.