Principal Security Researcher
Job description
A Principal Security Researcher role on GitLab's Application Security team, conducting security research and penetration testing on GitLab's AI-powered DevSecOps capabilities, including AI and agentic surfaces.
At a glance
- Employment
- Full-time · Employee (employment agreement)
- Work mode
- Remote · United States
- Pay
- USD 203,200 – 275,000 / year
What you'll do
- Conduct and lead security research projects across multiple functional areas.
- Identify novel, systemic, and chained vulnerabilities in GitLab, where individual weaknesses combine for outsized impact.
- Validate security vulnerabilities through hands-on testing, developing proof-of-concept exploits that demonstrate real-world attack scenarios.
- Assess emerging industry vulnerability classes against the GitLab codebase, and drive remediation of the class rather than the instance.
- Lead security research into GitLab's AI and agentic surfaces, and define the security requirements that engineering teams build against.
- Build and direct the tooling and automation that scales security research, including agent-assisted vulnerability discovery across our codebase.
- Research the security posture of open source tools and dependencies integrated with GitLab, report findings to their maintainers, and track mitigation following responsible disclosure guidelines.
- Solve technical problems of the highest scope, complexity, and ambiguity.
- Help shape the team and sub-department roadmap.
- Lead the integration of security research results into the engineering and business functions that need to act on them.
- Teach, mentor, and advise other domain experts and individual contributors across several teams.
- Share knowledge and novel vulnerability types with the security community.
What we're looking for
- 10+ years of experience in security research, penetration testing, or offensive security roles
- Strong ability in discovering and exploiting vulnerabilities in large codebase and complex systems
- Proficiency in two or more of Ruby, Go, Python, TypeScript, or Rust.
- Ability to read and analyze code across multiple languages and codebases
- Strong knowledge of AI frameworks
- Strong understanding of AI attack vectors including prompt injection, agent manipulation, and workflow exploitation
- At ease in establishing and driving complex remediation initiatives involving cross-functional teams
- Excellent written communication skills with an ability to articulate complex topics in a clear and concise manner.
- Ability to translate complex technical findings into clear risk assessments and remediation recommendations
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with creative thinking about attack scenarios
Nice to have
- Published security research or conference presentations
- Background in software engineering with distributed systems expertise
- Experience with GitLab or similar DevSecOps platforms
Your team
Application Security Team
Security Researchers are a part of our Application Security team, who address complex security challenges facing GitLab and its customers to enable GitLab to be the most secure software factory platform on the market. We focus on systemic product security risks and work cross-functionally to mitigate them while maintaining Engineering's development velocity.
Benefits
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Team Member Resource Groups
- Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Growth and Development Fund
- Parental Leave
Apply
Direct apply at GitLab
Opens the job posting at GitLab
About GitLab
The intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps
GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100 trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.
Key facts
- DevSecOps software
- More than 50 million registered users
- More than 50% of the Fortune 100 trust GitLab
- All of our roles are remote
- GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world