Senior Security Researcher

The Senior Security Researcher will drive vulnerability discovery and analysis within Rapid7’s Vulnerability Intelligence team. You’ll research zero-day and n-day threats, develop exploits, publish root cause analyses, and collaborate across teams to provide defenders with actionable insights.

About the Team

Rapid7’s Vulnerability Intelligence team leads industry research to uncover and prioritize risks for organizations worldwide. Our researchers discover and disclose zero-day vulnerabilities, analyze n-day threats, develop Metasploit modules, and identify patterns in emerging attack surfaces. Beyond driving coordinated responses to major incidents, the team provides actionable insights that help defenders stay ahead of evolving threats—proactively shaping understanding of today’s risks and tomorrow’s attack vectors.

About the Role

In this role, you will:

• Work with the broader Vulnerability Intelligence team to support day-to-day research operations, including coordinated vulnerability disclosures and rapid responses to major security incidents (Note: there is no on-call requirement for this role).

• Perform and publish root cause analyses of high-priority vulnerabilities and potential threats that highlight Rapid7’s attacker-focused approach to vulnerability intelligence.

• Develop and publish new exploits and attack techniques, working alongside the Metasploit team to incorporate them into Metasploit Framework as needed. We believe strongly that defenders benefit from having democratic access to offensive security capabilities in order to understand attacks and test their controls!

• Conduct zero-day vulnerability research against popular enterprise technologies (e.g., network appliances, VPN gateways, CI/CD servers, file transfer and backup solutions, etc).

• Advise our security and threat detection engineers as they develop vulnerability checks, fingerprints, and detections; contextualize risk and explain attack patterns to cross-team technical stakeholders.

The skills you’ll bring include:

• Hands-on experience with common vulnerability classes and exploitation techniques (e.g., command injection, deserialization, etc). We don't expect you to know everything, but you should be comfortable digging in to both learn and apply new or unfamiliar techniques when needed.

• Experience producing vulnerability root cause analyses (or other technical writing on vulnerabilities and exploits).

• Hands-on experience reverse engineering, patch diffing, and developing exploits. Prior experience developing Metasploit modules is a plus. Prior experience reverse engineering at least one common enterprise software development language (e.g. Java, .NET, C/C++) is also a plus.

• Familiarity with common security research tooling (e.g., IDA, Ghidra, Binary Ninja, Burpsuite, etc).

• An instinct for where and how to obtain or emulate vulnerable software. We can’t perform hands-on analysis without targets - sometimes we have lab targets, sometimes there are AMIs available, and sometimes we have to get creative.

• Deep empathy for the challenges that security teams and global organizations face in today's threat climate; willingness to listen, mentor, and collaborate across teams.

• Core Value Embodiment: Embody our core values to foster a culture of excellence that drives meaningful impact and collective success.

We know that the best ideas and solutions come from multi-dimensional teams. That’s because these teams reflect a variety of backgrounds and professional experiences. If you are excited about this role and feel your experience can make an impact, please don’t be shy - apply today.

About Rapid7

At Rapid7, our vision is to create a secure digital world for our customers, our industry, and our communities. We do this by harnessing our collective expertise and passion to challenge what’s possible and drive extraordinary impact. We’re building a dynamic and collaborative workplace where new ideas are welcome.

Protecting 11,000+ customers against bad actors and threats means we’re continuing to push the envelope just like we’ ve been doing for the past 20 years. If you ’re ready to solve some of the toughest challenges in cybersecurity, we’re ready to help you take command of your career. Join us.