§What You'll Do
- Identify and validate vulnerabilities in customer-authorized embedded systems, IoT devices, and real-time operating systems.
- Reverse engineer firmware to map attack surfaces, reproduce vulnerabilities in controlled environments, and validate fixes.
- Build scalable tooling for automated vulnerability discovery across diverse embedded platforms.
- Research attack techniques in isolated labs to evaluate defenses for constrained environments and proprietary protocols.
§Requirements
- Strong reverse engineering experience with embedded firmware and bare-metal systems.
- Proven vulnerability research experience: CVEs, advisories, or security research on embedded targets.
- Deep understanding of ARM, MIPS, or other embedded architectures.
- Proficiency with hardware debugging (JTAG, UART, SPI/I2C) and firmware extraction.
- Strong C/C++ skills for low-level security research and proof-of-concept testing.
§Nice to Have
- Experience with RTOS platforms: VxWorks, FreeRTOS, ThreadX, QNX.
- Proficiency with Ghidra, IDA, Binwalk, and custom analysis frameworks.
- Experience with protocol reverse engineering (Zigbee, BLE, proprietary RF).
- Familiarity with supply chain security and hardware integrity assessment.
- Experience building with LLMs and AI agents.
- Published research or conference presentations on embedded security.
§You Are
- Clearly interested in stepping away from purely manual research and moving toward the development of AI systems.
- Building something massive matters more to you than comfort, titles, or predictability.
- You want to be early at a company that will change an industry, and you're ready to do what that actually takes.
For Recruiters
Note to recruiting firms: Embedded vulnerability research and controlled security validation are the core requirements. Hardware security assessment and RTOS experience are strong pluses.
Ready?
Apply for Embedded Security Engineer
Email team@zealotlabs.com with a resume and a paragraph on what you want to build with us.
Apply now