Principal Red Team Operator

Armadin; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full Health, Dental, & Vision Coverage

Meaningful Equity Ownership

In-Office Meals

Haircuts at the Office

Company Sponsored Conferences & Events

401(k), HSA, and FSA Plans

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Armadin is hiring a Principal Red Team Operator in Palo Alto, CA. You will lead multi-surface offensive engagements, craft actionable remediation roadmaps, and drive threat intelligence initiatives.

You will mentor teammates and influence product direction with adversarial insights, building cutting-edge security capabilities for high-stakes enterprises. The role requires onsite collaboration with product engineering and security teams, delivering high-impact campaigns and executive-ready

Qualifications

• Advanced offensive security and red team experience.
• Ability to translate complex findings into remediation plans.
• Experience mentoring security engineers and operators.

Responsibilities

• Execute multi-disciplinary red team engagements spanning application security, network penetration testing, cloud infrastructure, and identity systems.
• Identify novel attack chains and weaknesses across surfaces.
• Develop rigorous reports and executive briefings translating findings into remediation roadmaps.
• Conduct advanced threat analysis and intelligence gathering on enterprise environments.
• Share tradecraft and tooling insights to elevate team capabilities.

Skills

Red team operations

Threat modeling

Executive briefings

Mentorship

Strategic thinking

AI/ML security

Tools

Burp Suite

OWASP ZAP

Cobalt Strike

Ghidra

IDA Pro

Nmap

Frida

Job description

About Us

At Armadin, we're a group of engineers, researchers, and security researchers on a mission to redefine what proactive security can do in the AI era. Cyberattacks are becoming autonomous and relentless and we believe defending against threats before they materialize is one of the most powerful ways to protect the institutions the world depends on.

About Us

At Armadin, we're a group of engineers, researchers, and security researchers on a mission to redefine what proactive security can do in the AI era. Cyberattacks are becoming autonomous and relentless and we believe defending against threats before they materialize is one of the most powerful ways to protect the institutions the world depends on.

We're building autonomous proactive security from the ground up, reinforcing the tradecraft of elite security practioners into purpose-built security models and agents that discover risk and remediate it before organizations are breached.

Led by Kevin Mandia, founder of Mandiant ($5.4B exit to Google), our team brings together researchers and engineers from Google, xAI, Meta, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Waterloo, Berkeley, and MIT to reinvent security for an adversary that never sleeps.

Role Overview

Every operator knows the ending. You found the path, chained it to access the crown jewel, and wrote it up. Then the engagement closed, the environment changed the next week, and nobody walked that kill chain again until next year's test. Armadin is built to end that cycle.

We're building an agentic attacker swarm. These are specialized AI agents running custom models that discover, exploit, and chain vulnerabilities across external, internal, identity, cloud, and application attack surfaces. They run continuously, at machine speed, against live production environments. Until recently, nobody could put a nation-state-caliber adversary inside every network around the clock. That's the hyperattack, and it's what we do. In one recent engagement, the swarm generated more than 17 million offensive actions in three days and validated 38 attack paths. That's the scale your tradecraft will run at.

As a Principal Red Team Operator, your tradecraft is the training signal. You'll run hands-on operations, and then you'll encode how you think into the reasoning our agents use at scale: how you pick a foothold, abuse an application's logic, pivot through identity, separate what's actually exploitable from scanner noise, and map the blast radius once you're in. You'll pressure-test full kill chains end to end, find where the swarm is naive, and teach it to move like an expert, using AI throughout your own workflow to go faster and deeper.

The Problems Here Are New Ones

You’ll work alongside operators who have spent decades on the front lines of red teaming and the AI engineers turning that experience into autonomous offense. It's a small, scrappy group with high ownership, and the work you ship reaches enterprises through industry leading partners. If you've ever finished an op thinking 'imagine running this everywhere, all the time,' this is where you get to do it.

• What does a kill chain look like when it can branch a thousand ways in parallel?
• How do you prove exploitability instead of just flagging it?
• What does a continuous hyperattack find that a two-week engagement never could?

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Execute sophisticated multi-disciplinary red team engagements spanning application security, network penetration testing, cloud infrastructure, and identity systems — combining expertise across attack vectors into cohesive, high-impact campaigns.
• Identify novel attack chains and weaknesses that transcend traditional security boundaries, conducting source code review, network analysis, binary reverse engineering, and infrastructure assessment in concert to uncover business-critical security gaps.
• Develop comprehensive, technically rigorous reports and executive briefings that translate complex offensive findings into clear remediation roadmaps and risk narratives for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Conduct advanced threat analysis and intelligence gathering to understand the full attack landscape of enterprise environments, including adversarial TTPs, business risk, and compliance implications.
• Share tradecraft, tool development insights, and lessons learned from complex engagements to elevate team capability and establish Armadin as a center of offensive security excellence.

Strategic Innovation & Product Collaboration

• Work closely with product engineering and AI teams — including onsite collaboration — to translate red team needs, methodologies, and adversarial insights into platform capabilities, tool integrations, and AI-driven attack simulations.
• Serve as the voice of offensive security tradecraft in product strategy discussions, ensuring platform development prioritizes real-world attack complexity and operator efficiency.
• Lead research initiatives into emerging attack vectors, exploitation techniques, AI-augmented adversarial methodologies, and novel tools to maintain Armadin’s position at the forefront of offensive security.
• Develop and contribute to open-source tooling, proprietary frameworks, and methodologies that enhance Armadin's capabilities and influence the broader security community.

Industry & Internal Leadership

• Represent Armadin as a thought leader in offensive security through conference talks, published research, security community engagement, and technical leadership.
• Interface directly with executive leadership and client C-suite to communicate strategic security findings, risk narratives, and business-level implications.
• Contribute to hiring, interviewing, and technical assessment of prospective red team operators to build world-class offensive security talent.

What You’ll Bring

Experience & Expertise

• Advanced web application penetration testing and secure code review (OWASP Top 10, business logic flaws, authentication/authorization bypass, API security, control flow analysis)
• Network penetration testing, Active Directory attacks, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and persistence operations across enterprise infrastructure
• Mobile application security assessments, thick/thin client reverse engineering, and binary analysis across platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux)
• Cloud infrastructure security, identity systems (Kerberos, SAML, OAuth), and multi-cloud red team operations
• Demonstrated ability to integrate findings across multiple attack surfaces into comprehensive, strategic offensive campaigns

Technical Proficiency

• Expert-level proficiency with offensive security tools across multiple domains (Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP, Caido, Nmap, Metasploit, Cobalt Strike, Impacket, BloodHound, Responder, CrackMapExec, Frida, Ghidra, IDA Pro, etc.)
• Advanced scripting and tool development in Python, Bash, PowerShell, or compiled languages; ability to extend C2 frameworks, develop custom exploits, and create application-specific tooling
• Deep understanding of network protocols, packet-level analysis, cryptography, system architecture (Windows, Unix/Linux, cloud platforms), and application design patterns
• Proficiency in multiple operating systems and platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS), container technologies, and cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Requirements

• Willingness to work onsite in our Palo Alto, CA office to collaborate with product engineering teams, support complex engagements, and participate in strategic initiatives
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills — capable of translating complex technical concepts for executive leadership, product teams, and diverse client audiences
• Strategic thinking and the ability to align technical initiatives with business objectives; experience influencing product roadmaps or organizational strategy
• Experience providing technical mentorship and guidance

Even Better With

• Prior experience working alongside AI/ML models, automated offensive security frameworks, or building AI-augmented attack tools
• Published research, conference speaking, or significant open-source contributions in offensive security
• Experience in startup or high-growth environments; demonstrated ability to wear multiple hats and drive initiatives with minimal bureaucracy
• Advanced certifications: OSCP, OSCE, CRTE, CRTO, or equivalent elite-level credentials
• Track record of building offensive security tools or frameworks adopted by the community

Location

Onsite in Palo Alto, CA

Benefits & Perks

• Full Health, Dental, & Vision Coverage
• Meaningful Equity Ownership
• In-Office Meals
• Haircuts at the Office
• Company Sponsored Conferences & Events
• 401(k), HSA, and FSA Plans
• Flexible PTO