Offensive Cyber Research Engineer

Twenty is seeking an exceptionally skilled Staff Offensive Cyber Research Engineer for an in-office position in its Arlington, VA office to lead the development of sophisticated offensive cyber capabilities that defend democracies worldwide. We're looking for someone with 6-8 years of deep technical expertise in offensive cyber operations, software development, and research, combined with proven leadership experience mentoring engineers and driving strategic technical initiatives.

In this role, you'll architect and lead the development of advanced attack path frameworks, establish engineering best practices for offensive tooling, mentor junior researchers, and serve as a technical authority on adversarial techniques and red team operations. You'll leverage your extensive operational background—ideally from government/military Digital Network Exploitation Analysis (DNEA), Exploitation Analyst (EA) operations, advanced penetration testing, or threat intelligence analysis—to shape the technical direction of our offensive cyber capabilities and build the next generation of cyber technologies for the United States and its allies.

At Twenty, we're taking on one of the most critical challenges of our time: defending democracies in the digital age. We develop revolutionary technologies that operate at the intersection of cyber and electromagnetic domains, where the speed and complexity of operations exceeds human cognition. Our team doesn't just solve problems – we deliver game-changing outcomes that directly improve national security. We're pragmatic optimists who understand that while our mission of defending America and its allies is challenging, we can succeed.

• Lead the architecture and design of sophisticated attack path frameworks that emulate advanced persistent threat (APT) behaviors and nation-state TTPs

• Establish technical standards and best practices for offensive cyber tool development across the organization

• Evaluate and recommend engineering courses of action for new offensive capabilities and system enhancements

• Drive technical decision-making for complex offensive cyber integrations and performance optimizations

• Architect scalable, modular frameworks for attack technique automation and adversary emulation

• Conduct advanced research into emerging adversary techniques, zero-day exploitation strategies, and novel attack vectors

• Develop proof-of-concept tools and techniques that push the boundaries of offensive cyber capabilities

• Stay current with threat actor innovations and translate emerging TTPs into defensive and offensive capabilities

• Publish internal research findings and contribute to the broader cyber security research community

• Identify capability gaps and lead initiatives to develop new offensive tools and methodologies

• Mentor and provide technical guidance to offensive cyber engineers and researchers, conducting thorough code reviews and knowledge transfer

• Lead technical discussions and facilitate strategic planning sessions for offensive capability development

• Organize research efforts and coordinate cross-functional collaboration with data engineering, backend, and intelligence analysis teams

• Establish and maintain engineering best practices, secure coding standards, and operational security procedures

• Guide junior engineers in understanding complex adversary behaviors and translating them into technical implementations

• Design and implement advanced attack paths that emulate sophisticated adversary campaigns across multiple domains

• Create reusable, production-grade components for complex attack techniques including credential harvesting, lateral movement, and defense evasion

• Develop custom tooling and automation frameworks that operate at machine speed for large-scale adversary emulation

• Lead the design of ETL pipelines for processing threat intelligence, security logs, and operational data at scale

• Architect standardized schemas for cyber operations datasets that support graph-based analysis and…