Application Security Research Engineer

My client, an InsuranceTech firm, based in London, is looking for an Application Security Research Engineer to join their growing team.

About the Application Security Research Engineer role:

My client is looking for a Senior Application Security Researcher to join an amazing group of technologists to contribute to various products in my client's ecosystem. The role will revolve around securing platforms, by undertaking vulnerability assessments, conducting security research and contributing to all stages of the secure development life-cycle. This will require collaborating with the engineering team to understand the development process, and supporting development using threat modelling, architecture and design.

You will have a history of conducting application vulnerability assessments and will be able to clearly communicate your findings through report writing and close collaboration with the engineering team. Ideally you will have some knowledge of the secure development life-cycle and software engineering principles. You can work independently to research a problem domain to gain insight and subsequently deliver the work and solve the problem. You will be comfortable getting into the guts of a complex distributed system and be able to conceptualise its operation at many levels. Most importantly you are excited and motivated by the challenge of solving hard problems in a way that delivers to clients and delights them.

Responsibilities

• Perform vulnerability assessments of the my client's main platform under limited guidance of the Head of Security Research.
• Conduct security research to identify novel threats and mitigations that may impact the platform.
• You will support the Engineering team by:
• Educating and mentoring the team on relevant attacks, defence, mitigations and tooling
• Contribute to secure software development design guidance that addresses both the security and business needs
• Review source code to support the delivery of software
• Undertake threat modelling sessions and use advanced judgement to contribute to software designs.
• Support research and evaluate the state of the art within the distributed ledger space.

Requirements

• First and foremost we want you to love what you do. You will be a security evangelist beginning to have recognition as a subject matter expert within my client and the external community of platform participants, both current and future.
• You'll have five or more years experience in a direct information security role, with at least three of those specialising in application security assessment using your advanced knowledge of the security landscape to create incremental value to my client's platform. We'd love to see evidence of other experience too, you might have been a developer or network operations engineer in a previous life.
• We believe that we work better as a team, and hope you share that belief. You have experience leading small teams and providing mentoring and guidance to junior engineers so they can meet their career aspirations and make meaningful contributions. You'll be working in a diverse group of people with a variety of skills and backgrounds where your high level of emotional intelligence and influencing techniques can generate enthusiasm for your suggestions and recommendations for improvements.
• You'll need excellent communication skills, both verbal and written. You'll be happy presenting to the company at all-hands meetings or explaining the impact of vulnerabilities you identify to a range of stakeholders. Regular collaboration with management and peers mean you contribute to tactical planning and solving complex challenges.

Desired Skills:

The Senior Security Research Engineer will have “practitioner” level skills in software development security, security architecture and engineering and security assessment and testing. They will also have competence in one or more of: communication and network security, identity and access management (IAM) and security operations

The Senior Security Research Engineer will be expected to demonstrate:

• Good understanding of standard security vulnerabilities and their standard fixes and mitigations
• Ability to identify security issues at different stages of the SDLC - from architecture & design through to implementation
• Experience performing dynamic analysis of software using debugging tools
• Expertise in Java, Kotlin, or a similar high-level language
• PKI and Cryptography
• In-depth knowledge of Java and JVM internals is beneficial
• Reverse engineering experience
• Experience solving Capture-the-Flag challenges is a bonus!
• Develop tools to support vulnerability analysis
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to convey highly technical information to non-technical audiences.
• Build relationships with engineering teams to improve product security
• Using revision control systems

If the above is of interest and you would like to find out more please apply to this job advertisement or call me on 0207 509 8040 to find out more.