Senior Principal Security Researcher — Reverse Engineering

Clarity Innovations; City of Rome (NY); On-site; USD 146,000 - 248,000; Full time

Job summary

Clarity Innovations in Rome, NY seeks a Senior Principal Security Researcher to independently plan and execute advanced vulnerability research and reverse engineering assignments, examining system behavior and developing reproducible demonstrations for customer-authorized work.

You will own research efforts from planning through delivery, select suitable analysis methods, mentor junior researchers, and collaborate across teams to improve tooling, processes, and operational impact in national

Qualifications

• Secret clearance (able to obtain TS/SCI); U.S. citizenship required.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent experience, and a minimum of 5 years of prior relevant experience.
• Demonstrated ability to independently conduct vulnerability research and reverse engineering, taking defined investigations from planning through documented results.
• Experience using Ghidra, Binary Ninja, IDA, or comparable reverse engineering and disassembly tools.
• Strong knowledge of Linux fundamentals, including sockets, file descriptors, networking, iptables, file systems, and kernel behavior; ability to troubleshoot basic networking issues.
• Ability to read and write C and analyze assembly for architectures such as ARM, MIPS, or x86-64.
• Strong programming fundamentals, including networking, data structures, and data models.
• Practical experience with exploitation techniques such as arbitrary read/write primitives, shellcode development, return-oriented programming, or jump-oriented programming.
• Experience adjusting research methods or recommending tooling and process improvements to solve technical problems.
• Ability to collaborate across technical boundaries, explain findings clearly, and provide guidance to less experienced contributors.
• Experience participating in capture-the-flag competitions, hackathons, or other cybersecurity competitions.

Responsibilities

• Plan and execute research efforts, define milestones, assess feasibility, and deliver results aligned with customer priorities.
• Perform static and dynamic analysis using disassemblers, debuggers, emulators, tracers, and fuzzers.
• Identify vulnerabilities, conduct root-cause analysis, and document reproducible findings.
• Develop PoC exploits and exploit components for authorized needs; evaluate mitigations.
• Adjust tools/processes and recommend improvements to the research team.
• Build reusable tooling and automation to speed discovery and validation.
• Communicate progress, risks, findings, and recommendations to stakeholders.
• Collaborate across the research team to resolve dependencies and build support for approaches.
• Mentor junior researchers; participate in peer reviews and coordinate tasks within efforts.

Skills

Vulnerability research

Reverse engineering

C programming

Assembly analysis

Linux fundamentals

Networking basics

Team collaboration

CTF participation

Exploit development

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical discipline, or equivalent experience

Tools

Ghidra

Binary Ninja

IDA

GDB

gdbserver

QEMU

Unicorn

AFL++

libFuzzer

Android NDK

SELinux

seccomp

ASLR

Job description

Clarity Innovations in Rome, NY seeks a Senior Principal Security Researcher to independently plan and execute advanced vulnerability research and reverse engineering assignments, examining system behavior and developing reproducible demonstrations for customer-authorized work.

You will own research efforts from planning through delivery, select suitable analysis methods, mentor junior researchers, and collaborate across teams to improve tooling, processes, and operational impact in national