Senior Space Red Team Lead – Remote Space Cyber Testing

SIXGEN; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Disability insurance

401(k) with employer contribution

Professional development reimbursement

Flexible remote-work policies

Flexible paid time off

Job summary

SIXGEN is seeking a hands-on Senior Space Red Team Operator to lead authorized adversarial assessments of space systems and the infrastructure that supports them.

You will evaluate attack paths across spacecraft, payload, ground, cloud, mission-network, and operator environments; develop safe and repeatable test methods; and translate technical findings into clear mission risk and practical engineering improvements.

Qualifications

• Seven or more years of hands-on red teaming, penetration testing, vulnerability research, exploit development, or related offensive security work.
• Advanced Linux knowledge, including networking, permissions, services, and security controls.
• Hands-on embedded-systems knowledge with firmware analysis and hardware interfaces.
• Cloud security experience across AWS/Azure/GCP and IAM, networking, and logging.
• Experience assessing enterprise networks and apps, including TCP/IP, DNS, VPNs, APIs.
• Ability to write and review Python and shell scripts; knowledge of C/C++/Go is valued.
• Ability to work independently, manage ambiguity, preserve evidence, and communicate risk.
• Willingness to travel and support testing outside normal hours.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end red team assessments, penetration tests, and adversary emulation of space systems.
• Create assessment plans, attack paths, test cases, and Rules of Engagement.
• Evaluate Linux-based systems, embedded devices, flight software, ground-station services, and cloud apps for weaknesses.
• Research vulnerabilities in firmware, OS, interfaces, authentication, APIs, containers, and identity services.
• Develop tooling, exploits, proofs-of-concept, and automation for repeatable tests.
• Coordinate with owners, engineers, and range personnel to avoid impact to safety or mission ops.
• Document evidence, steps to reproduce, attack chains, severity, and remediation recommendations.
• Support purple-team validation, detection engineering, and post-testing retesting.
• Mentor operators, contribute to internal tradecraft, and assist with scoping and proposals.

Skills

Advanced Linux

Embedded systems

Cloud security

Red team / adversary emulation

Penetration testing

Python scripting

Shell scripting

Risk communication

Travel flexibility

Ethical testing

Tools

JTAG

SWD

UART

CAN

Firmware analysis

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

Container tooling

Job description

SIXGEN is seeking a hands-on Senior Space Red Team Operator to lead authorized adversarial assessments of space systems and the infrastructure that supports them.

You will evaluate attack paths across spacecraft, payload, ground, cloud, mission-network, and operator environments; develop safe and repeatable test methods; and translate technical findings into clear mission risk and practical engineering improvements.