Principal Vulnerability Researcher

Principal Vulnerability Researcher

Office-based | Oxfordshire -

If relocating is required for this role, NPL may be able to provide relocation support, subject to location and eligibility. Please contact your recruiter to discuss the options available to you.

We’re growing our Vulnerability Research Team and are looking for a Principal Vulnerability Researcher to perform security research into a wide-range of carrier-grade telecoms devices, including routers, firewalls, and mobile network nodes.

This is a hands-on, office-based role for a researcher with extensive expertise in finding and demonstrating security vulnerabilities in embedded and networked systems.

The Role

· Vulnerability research against real-world network and embedded devices

· Reverse engineering firmware and binaries to discover security vulnerabilities

· Performing source code analysis to identify memory safety issues, logic flaws, and design weaknesses

· Designing and running fuzzing campaigns against protocols, services and interfaces, on both the target device and via emulation

· Working with a variety of CPU architectures such as ARM, MIPS, PowerPC and x86-64

· Providing technical leadership and setting research standards

· Investigating how individual vulnerabilities can be chained to maximise system compromise

· Developing and maintaining tools to improve personal and team productivity

· Producing clear, high-quality technical reports describing root cause and impact

About You

Ideal Background

· Extensive experience in security or vulnerability research

· Strong reverse engineering skills using static and dynamic analysis using disassemblers – Ghidra experience is preferred

· Demonstrated ability to efficiently conduct source code analysis on large codebases

· Practical experience with fuzzing techniques, tooling, optimisation, and crash triage

· Strong understanding of embedded systems, OS internals, and networking, including familiarity with underlying hardware

· Expertise in embedded operating systems such as Linux and VxWorks

· Proficiency in C/C++, Assembly and scripting languages such as Python or Lua

· Eagerness to investigate and apply the latest AI tools and techniques

· Practical experience with network or embedded devices

· Candidates with published security research or CVEs are particularly encouraged

What’s on Offer

· Principal-level role with real technical influence

· Cutting-edge research into complex, heterogeneous systems

· Collaborative, engineering-driven culture, with high standards for quality

· Competitive salary and benefits

· The opportunity to attend major international security conferences and training courses

· Based in Oxfordshire

Eligibility

As you will be required to work with UK Government departments, all applicants must already hold, or be able to obtain, the necessary UK security clearance. Therefore, the following must apply:

· You must be a British Citizen. If you hold dual nationality, of which one component is British, your application will still be considered.

· You’ll usually need to have been a resident in the UK for seven out of the last ten years before applying for a role with us.