Senior Embedded Vulnerability Researcher

Overview

Draper is an independent, nonprofit research and development company headquartered in Cambridge, MA. The 2,000+ employees of Draper tackle important national challenges with a promise of delivering successful and usable solutions. From military defense and space exploration to biomedical engineering, lives often depend on the solutions we provide. Our multidisciplinary teams of engineers and scientists work in a collaborative environment that inspires the cross-fertilization of ideas necessary for true innovation.

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Draper's Offensive Cyber Security Group is looking for dedicated individuals to develop tailored solutions to meet our DoD and IC Sponsor directives. Our organization's not-for-profit status ensures a capability-driven focus on the United States of America's national interests that allows us to address some of our Nation's most pressing challenges. Due to the variety of USG organizational needs, our technical efforts and opportunities vary from conventional cyber operations enablement tooling to embedded vulnerability research and exploit development on a wide range of devices and systems.

• Assess hardware and software for security vulnerabilities using a breadth of technologies and techniques.
• Develop software that meets behavior and security requirements for tailored applications.
• Integrate software capabilities with other tasks or groups to improve performance or behavior requirements.
• Create new tools and systems to detect and exploit vulnerabilities and system weaknesses.
• Document nominal application and system functionality, in addition to implemented changes.
• Help define the analysis approach for a particular problem and independently execute assignments.
• Contribute high quality content for technical reports and presentations with minimal guidance.
• Proactively identify needs and concerns associated with design decisions and communicate them to project leadership.

• Curiosity-driven approach to solving complex, customer-driven problems as part of a multi-disciplinary team.
• Collaborate and communicate effectively and openly with multi-disciplinary program team members, program leadership, and non-technical personnel.
• Be a team player able to work in a fast-paced environment with the ability to balance multiple competing tasks and demands.

5-10 years experience in Cybersecurity or related field is required.

• Proficiency with modern program analysis methodologies and techniques.
• Reverse‑engineering assessment techniques for firmware or embedded systems.
• Familiarity with binary file and file system structures and formats.
• Hands‑on proficiency with reverse engineering tooling such as Ghidra, IDA, GDB, RR.
• Hands‑on proficiency with physical instrumentation or hardware modification, soldering.
• Experience with JTAG/SWD/BDM, and eMMC/NAND/SPI flash data extraction.
• Exploitation techniques for embedded devices across platforms and architectures.
• Familiarity of network stack and internals.
• Familiarity of operating system internals throughout user mode, kernel mode, and during boot processes for at least one of the following: GNU/Linux, RTOS.
• Familiarity with architectures and assembly: x86, ARM, Hexagon, PowerPC.

• Proficiency with programming languages such as C, C++, Python, Java.
• Familiarity with scripting languages such as Bash, Powershell.
• Familiarity in development environments for GNU/Linux or Windows.

• Successful history in authoring of technical proposals and documents.
• Leadership in advanced R&D initiatives, including government‑funded projects.
• Leadership of critical programs with more than two full‑time staff members.
• Proficient in teamwork and communication with diverse audiences.

• Experience with side channel attacks (glitching) to place components and/or devices into altered states to bypass protections.
• Familiarity with custom file system extraction and modification, removal and/or regeneration of OOB/CRC data.
• Familiarity with bus and…