Principal Security Researcher

Discipline: Reverse Engineering / Vulnerability Research Location: Rome, NY Clearance: Secret with the ability to obtain and maintain TS/SCI

Company Overview

Clarity Innovations equips customers with the technology, expertise, and support needed to conduct successful cyber operations. We bring together talented engineers, researchers, and operators to solve some of the U.S. Government’s most challenging technical problems. Our teams combine technical excellence, creativity, and collaboration to deliver capabilities that advance customer missions.

Role

Clarity Innovations is seeking a Senior Principal Security Researcher to independently execute complex vulnerability research and reverse engineering assignments. You will investigate system behavior, identify weaknesses, and develop reproducible demonstrations of their impact within customer-authorized research activities.

You will own defined research efforts from planning through delivery, select appropriate analysis methods, and adjust approaches as evidence develops. Your contributions will significantly affect research outcomes and may influence departmental results. The role requires practical technical knowledge, collaboration within and occasionally outside the research team, and the ability to recommend improvements and assist junior researchers.

Responsibilities

• Independently plan and execute assigned research efforts, define milestones, assess feasibility, and deliver results aligned with customer priorities.
• Perform static and dynamic analysis using disassemblers, debuggers, emulators, tracers, and fuzzers.
• Identify vulnerabilities, conduct root-cause analysis, and document reproducible findings and technical limitations.
• Develop reliable proof-of-concept exploits and operational exploit components for authorized customer requirements; evaluate and bypass relevant mitigations.
• Adjust research tools and processes, and recommend enhancements that improve the effectiveness of the research team.
• Build reusable tooling and automation to accelerate discovery, analysis, and validation.
• Communicate progress, risks, findings, and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders; share results externally when authorized.
• Collaborate within and occasionally outside the research team to resolve dependencies and build support for research approaches.
• Provide guidance and assistance to junior researchers, participate in peer reviews, and coordinate technical tasks within assigned efforts.

Minimum Qualifications

• Secret security clearance with the ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance; U.S. citizenship is required.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent experience, and a minimum of 5 years of prior relevant experience.
• Demonstrated ability to independently conduct vulnerability research and reverse engineering, taking defined investigations from planning through documented results.
• Experience using Ghidra, Binary Ninja, IDA, or comparable reverse engineering and disassembly tools.
• Strong knowledge of Linux fundamentals, including sockets, file descriptors, networking, iptables, file systems, and kernel behavior; ability to troubleshoot basic networking issues.
• Ability to read and write C and analyze assembly for architectures such as ARM, MIPS, or x86-64.
• Strong programming fundamentals, including networking, data structures, and data models.
• Practical experience with exploitation techniques such as arbitrary read/write primitives, shellcode development, return-oriented programming, or jump-oriented programming.
• Experience adjusting research methods or recommending tooling and process improvements to solve technical problems.
• Ability to collaborate across technical boundaries, explain findings clearly, and provide guidance to less experienced contributors.
• Experience participating in capture-the-flag competitions, hackathons, or other cybersecurity competitions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active Top Secret security clearance.
• Experience reverse engineering operating systems and kernels.
• Experience with AFL++ or libFuzzer and security mechanisms such as SELinux, seccomp, ASLR, and control-flow integrity.
• Experience with GDB, gdbserver, compiler toolchains, and the Android Native Development Kit.
• Experience using QEMU or Unicorn to emulate code in non-native environments.
• Demonstrated experience discovering previously unknown vulnerabilities, including zero-days.
• Experience coordinating a research workstream, reviewing peers’ findings, or mentoring junior researchers.

Salary Range: $145,900 - $248,000