Security Research Engineering Technical Leader

As a member of Talos, you will support cutting‑edge detection and mitigation technologies. You will work towards keeping yourself abreast of the latest industry threat creation and defense techniques, and you will develop proof‑of‑concept solutions, provide domain expertise, and guide implementation to facilitate a successful security posture in Cisco’s products. If you enjoy vulnerability research, crash analysis, reverse engineering, and researching new techniques and writing tools to automate these tasks, this job is for you!

Your Impact

• Conduct security research, including the development of tools for vulnerability analysis and mitigation.
• Develop static and run‑time analysis tools to identify root causes and input conditions related to vulnerabilities.
• Develop tools and environments as necessary to automate processes, analyze results, and test complex scenarios.
• Perform vulnerability triage and proof‑of‑concept exploit development to support the creation of detection content.
• Write detailed technical reports, summaries, and testing methodologies.
• Research emerging technologies, protocols, and testing methodologies.
• Develop proof‑of‑concept exploits for testing vulnerability mitigations.
• Perform patch analysis to find and trigger vulnerabilities.
• Reverse engineer binary applications, protocols, and formats.
• Analyze vulnerabilities and emerging security threats and technologies.
• Provide critical security‑focused expertise to engineering organizations.

Minimum Qualifications

• Demonstrated ability in vulnerability research or a closely related area such as exploit or mitigation development on Linux systems.
• Significant experience with C/C++, and a scripting language (e.g., Python), and assembly (e.g., x86/x64, ARM, etc.).

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Cyber Security, or other tech‑related degree.
• Expert knowledge of Linux internals, including application memory layout, common OS APIs, and system call operations, limitations, and side effects.
• Mastery of reverse engineering and experience with related tools such as IDA Pro, Binary Ninja, Ghidra, etc., including plugin development.
• Experience in the discovery of Linux vulnerabilities and creating corresponding exploits.
• Strong understanding of advanced networking concepts, protocols, and common enterprise networking scenarios.
• Experience with common vulnerabilities and methods of exploitation, such as memory corruption, web application exploitation, file format vulnerabilities, and protocol‑based weaknesses.
• Ability to work independently with minimum supervision and to tackle additional tasks as the need arises.
• Great communication skills.

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.

Cisco is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis. Cisco will consider for employment, on a case‑by‑case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.