Vulnerability Researcher

Zealot Labs; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive cash

Meaningful early equity

Mission-driven work

Challenging problems

Job summary

Zealot Labs is seeking vulnerability researchers to design and build agentic systems that autonomously perform vulnerability research across firmware, networks, mobile OSes, and IoT targets. The role emphasises emulation, instrumentation, fuzzing, and exploit primitives integrated into scalable tool interfaces.

You will join our New York City office with hybrid in-person collaboration, and relocation support to work with a team of researchers from leading labs and agencies.

Qualifications

• Prior vulnerability research experience.
• Willing to relocate to New York City for hybrid in-person work.

Responsibilities

• Design and build agentic systems that autonomously perform vulnerability research against real targets.
• Wire emulation (QEMU, Unicorn, Qiling), instrumentation (Frida, DynamoRIO), fuzzing, and exploit primitives into tool interfaces.
• Develop evaluation and benchmarking infrastructure to measure progress and reliability.

Skills

Systems programming (C/C++, Rust)

ML infrastructure

Binary analysis

RE / debugger chops

Agent harness orchestration

Tools

QEMU

Unicorn

Qiling

PANDA

FirmAE

Frida

DynamoRIO

GDB

IDA

Ghidra

Job description

Zealot (zealotlabs.com) builds AI systems that find zero-days, emulate target devices, and develop working exploits for U.S. defense and intelligence customers. We’re backed by tier-1 U.S. venture firms and industry leaders, and our team includes alumni of Anthropic, xAI, NSA, USCYBERCOM, Anduril, Unit 8200, and the Mossad.

We’re looking for vulnerability researchers to help design and build our agentic systems that autonomously perform vulnerability research against real targets - firmware, network stacks, mobile OSes, IoT. That means wiring emulation (QEMU, Unicorn, Qiling), instrumentation (Frida, DynamoRIO), fuzzing, and exploit primitives into tool interfaces for agents, as well as the evaluation and benchmarking infrastructure to know whether any of it is working.

What we’re looking for

• 2-3+ years across systems programming (C/C++, Rust) and ML infrastructure
• Comfort with binary analysis, memory corruption classes, and modern mitigations (ASLR, CFI, PAC, MTE)
• Hands-on work with agent harnesses - orchestration, tool-use, eval loops - in production or at benchmark scale
• Fluency with at least one emulation stack (QEMU, Unicorn, Qiling, PANDA, FirmAE)
• Strong RE / debugger chops (GDB, IDA or Ghidra) and the patience to use them

Nice to have

Pwn-heavy CTF experience (DEF CON finals, PPP, DiceGang, Shellphish, Theori, Team Atlanta), public CVEs, conference talks, AIxCC / CGC participation, or kernel / baseband RE.

Read this part carefully

That list is what the fully-formed version of this role looks like. It’s not a filter. Tech can be learned. Spirit cannot. We’ve watched the right people pick up binary exploitation from scratch and outship ten-year veterans inside a year. Tell us what you’ve taught yourself recently and what you’d tear into first here.

Requirements

Prior Vulnerability Research experience, and willing to relocate to work in-person/hybrid in our New York City office.

What we offer

• Competitive cash, meaningful early equity, a mission that matters, and hard problems nobody has solved yet.