Senior Security Researcher

About the Company

Censys’ mission is to be the one place to understand everything on the internet. Today, Censys delivers real-time Internet intelligence and actionable threat insights to global governments, over 50% of the Fortune 500, and leading threat intelligence providers worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Drive product capability by bringing an offensive practitioner's perspective to scanning, fingerprinting, and attack surface data
• Conduct original research into emerging attack techniques, exploitation trends, and C2 infrastructure
• Publish seminal work including research reports, technical blog posts, and conference-caliber material
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product to translate research findings into new scanning modules and detection features
• Lead agentic AI threat research, building and evaluating autonomous penetration testing agents and LLM-powered tools
• Track adversary infrastructure and encode knowledge into repeatable detection logic
• Mentor and act as an internal subject-matter expert on offensive techniques

Requirements

• 5+ years of hands-on penetration testing, red teaming, or adversary emulation experience
• Demonstrated ability to independently identify and characterize vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques
• Strong understanding of network protocols and service fingerprinting
• Hands-on experience with agentic systems for offensive security (e.g., HackSynth, RedTeamLLM, CAI, PentAG)
• Proficiency in scripting or coding with Python, Go, or similar
• Familiarity with red team frameworks and tradecraft
• Comfort working with large-scale Internet scan data

Preferred Qualifications

• Relevant certifications such as OSCP, OSCE, OSEP, or GXPN
• Experience with IoT, OT/ICS, or embedded device security research
• Prior work as a researcher at a security vendor
• Track record of public research output including CVEs, conference talks, or tool releases
• Familiarity with compliance-adjacent security testing (SOC 2, ISO 27001, or CMMC)