Senior Cybersecurity Researcher — Adversary Emulation

fortra; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Fortra is seeking a Senior Cybersecurity Researcher to join the Cobalt Strike team. This hands-on role focuses on understanding attacker tradecraft, OS internals, and defensive controls, turning research into practical product capabilities for authorized security teams.

You'll work with engineers across disciplines to prototype and validate techniques in lab environments, write clear analyses, and help shape the roadmap by identifying emerging threats and opportunities for safe adversary

Qualifications

• Strong experience in cybersecurity research, offensive security, threat research, red teaming, or related discipline.
• Deep curiosity about how adversaries operate and how security teams can safely emulate, detect, and respond to those behaviors.
• Working knowledge of Windows internals.
• Understanding common post-exploitation concepts, attacker tradecraft, and enterprise security controls.
• Ability to analyze technical research, threat intelligence, proof-of-concept code, malware reports, or detection logic and translate findings into clear product recommendations.
• Experience working in controlled lab environments to test techniques, validate assumptions, and reproduce technical behaviors.
• Strong analytical reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Ability to write clear, accurate technical documentation for engineering, product, and customer-facing audiences.
• Ability to work independently on ambiguous research problems while communicating progress, tradeoffs, and findings clearly.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• High ethical standards and sound judgment, especially when working with offensive security technology.

Responsibilities

• Research adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures focusing on post-exploitation tradecraft and attacker behavior.
• Analyze security research, malware reports, PoC techniques, and security controls to identify opportunities for product improvements.
• Collaborate with engineers, PMs, QA, and support to turn research into practical capabilities.
• Prototype, document, and validate new techniques in controlled lab environments.
• Evaluate how offensive techniques interact with Windows security features, endpoint controls, logging, and enterprise hardening.
• Produce technical write-ups, design notes, research summaries, and recommendations.
• Contribute to the roadmap by identifying trends and customer needs.
• Communicate findings to technical and non-technical audiences via presentations, docs, blogs, webinars.

Skills

Cybersecurity research

Offensive security

Threat research

Red teaming

Penetration testing

Malware analysis

Reverse engineering

Detection engineering

Windows internals

Post-exploitation

Analytical thinking

Technical writing

Independent work

Communication skills

Tools

WinDbg

x64dbg

Ghidra

IDA Pro

Process Monitor

Process Explorer

Sysmon

ETW

Job description

Fortra is seeking a Senior Cybersecurity Researcher to join the Cobalt Strike team. This hands-on role focuses on understanding attacker tradecraft, OS internals, and defensive controls, turning research into practical product capabilities for authorized security teams.

You'll work with engineers across disciplines to prototype and validate techniques in lab environments, write clear analyses, and help shape the roadmap by identifying emerging threats and opportunities for safe adversary