Vulnerability Researcher, New York APPLIED AI VR RE FUZZING EXPLOIT DEV New York, NY / On Site →

Zealot Labs, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Zealot Labs, Inc. is a early-stage startup in New York focused on APPLIED AI and vulnerability research. We design agentic systems to autonomously perform vulnerability research against real targets across firmware, networks, and IoT, with hands-on work in emulation, fuzzing, and exploit primitives.

You will contribute to the evaluation infrastructure, tool interfaces, and production-grade harnesses, requiring deep RE skills and proficiency with multiple emulation stacks. Equity is offered.

Qualifications

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

Responsibilities

• Help design and build agentic systems that autonomously perform vulnerability research against real targets: firmware, network stacks, mobile OSes, and IoT.
• Wire emulation (QEMU, Unicorn, Qiling), instrumentation (Frida, DynamoRIO), fuzzing, and exploit primitives into tool interfaces for agents.
• Build the evaluation and benchmarking infrastructure that tells us whether any of it is actually working.
• 2–3+ years across systems programming and ML infrastructure.
• Comfort with binary analysis and modern mitigations.
• Hands-on work with agent harnesses — orchestration, tool-use, eval loops — in production or at benchmark scale.

Skills

C/C++

Rust

Binary analysis

GDB/IDA/Ghidra

Emulation stacks

Fuzzing

Tooling orchestration

ML infrastructure

Tools

QEMU

Unicorn

Qiling

PANDA

FirmAE

Frida

DynamoRIO

Job description

Zealot is deploying AI systems at the center of western cyber operations , backed by tier-1 US VCs and industry leaders. Our team includes alumni of Anthropic, xAI, and Anduril. Soon live with close U.S. allies abroad.

APPLIED AI VR RE FUZZING EXPLOIT DEV

Compensation Competitive base + skin in the game equity

Location New York, NY On Site

Stage Early-stage startup backed by tier 1 investors. Small, growing team with exceptionally high ownership.

• + Help design and build our agentic systems that autonomously perform vulnerability research against real targets: firmware, network stacks, mobile OSes, and IoT.
• + Wire emulation (QEMU, Unicorn, Qiling), instrumentation (Frida, DynamoRIO), fuzzing, and exploit primitives into tool interfaces for agents.
• + Build the evaluation and benchmarking infrastructure that tells us whether any of it is actually working.
• + 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, or AIxCC / CGC participation.
• + Kernel or baseband RE.
• + That requirements list is what the fully-formed version of this role looks like. It's not a filter. If you're sharp, hungry, and funny, apply anyway, even if half the bullets read like a foreign language today.
• + 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.

Apply for Vulnerability Researcher, New York