Bitcoin Security Engineer

MicroStrategy•Tysons, VA

8d•$103,900 - $186,900•Onsite

About The Position

Strategy is expanding its Bitcoin Security program with a dedicated offensive-security function to continuously test, validate, and harden the security of Strategy's bitcoin holdings, custody relationships, and supporting infrastructure. The Bitcoin Security Engineer is a hands-on, deeply technical individual-contributor role responsible for adversarially assessing every layer of Strategy's bitcoin security posture—from cryptographic key material and signing ceremonies to the custodians, exchanges, and service providers that safeguard institutional-scale bitcoin. Where the Director of Bitcoin Security sets architecture and strategy, this role validates it—probing wallets, hardware, protocols, and custodial controls to find weaknesses before adversaries do, and producing rigorous research and analysis that raises the security bar across the bitcoin custody ecosystem.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree required in Computer Science, Cryptography, Information Security, Engineering, or a related field; Master's Degree in a relevant discipline strongly preferred. Equivalent demonstrable offensive-security experience will be considered.
6+ years of hands-on penetration testing, red-team, vulnerability research, or exploit-development experience, with a substantial portion focused on cryptographic systems, financial systems, or blockchain and bitcoin environments.
One or more recognized offensive-security or blockchain-security credentials strongly preferred, such as OSCP, OSEP, or OSED (Offensive Security); GPEN, GXPN, GWAPT, or GREM (GIAC/SANS); CRTO or CRTL (Zero-Point Security); or a Certified Blockchain Security Professional credential.
Demonstrated hands-on ability to test Bitcoin protocol, wallet, and node implementations, covering key management, multisignature and MPC schemes, PSBT and transaction construction, derivation paths, and on-chain and off-chain attack surfaces.
Deep understanding of cryptographic primitives and protocols, including digital signatures, hashing, key generation, entropy sources, secure key storage, and hardware-backed security mechanisms, and how they fail in real deployments.
Experience adversarially assessing Bitcoin custody solutions, including multisignature and hardware wallets, HSMs, recovery mechanisms, signing ceremonies, and operational security controls, with the ability to evaluate third-party custodian security claims.
Proven ability to conduct and document original security research and structured technical analysis of custodian, cryptographic, and blockchain systems, translating findings into defensible risk and remediation conclusions.
Proficiency in one or more of Python, Rust, C/C++, or Go, with the ability to build custom test tooling, fuzzers, and proof-of-concept exploits.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate highly technical offensive findings into actionable guidance for engineers, custody teams, executives, and non-technical stakeholders.
Demonstrated success operating as a senior individual contributor with high autonomy and sound judgment, and the discipline to handle highly sensitive systems and material safely, ethically, and within authorized scope.

Responsibilities

Plan and execute hands-on penetration tests against Strategy's bitcoin wallet architectures, including single-sig, multisignature, MPC, and hardware-wallet deployments, targeting key generation, storage, backup, and recovery workflows for exploitable weaknesses.
Design and run adversarial simulations of signing ceremonies, quorum policies, and transaction-approval workflows, testing for insider-threat, social-engineering, collusion, and operational-security failure modes across cold, warm, and hot storage tiers.
Perform security testing of hardware wallets, HSMs, secure elements, and air-gapped devices, including firmware analysis, fault-injection and side-channel research, entropy and RNG validation, and supply-chain tamper assessment.
Test Bitcoin node, RPC, and transaction-construction surfaces, including PSBT handling, fee and RBF logic, transaction malleability, address-generation and derivation-path validation, and P2P/mempool-facing attack surfaces.
Assess the security of blockchain-adjacent infrastructure Strategy relies on, including smart contracts, tokenization platforms, bridges, oracles, and on-chain settlement logic, for vulnerabilities and abuse conditions.
Lead deep offensive and analytical research into the security posture of Strategy's custodians and prospective custodians, including qualified custodians, exchanges, and asset servicers, pressure-testing their key-management, segregation, access-control, and recovery claims through structured technical due diligence and adversarial threat modeling.
Build and maintain comprehensive threat models and attack-surface inventories for Strategy's end-to-end bitcoin custody chain, prioritizing findings by realistic adversary capability and financial impact.
Produce clear, reproducible penetration-test reports with proof-of-concept exploits, severity ratings, and pragmatic remediation guidance, and partner with engineering and custody teams to validate fixes through retesting.
Conduct original research into emerging bitcoin, cryptography, and blockchain vulnerabilities; responsibly disclose findings; and represent Strategy within the global bitcoin security community, including exchanges, custodians, service providers, and core developers.
Develop custom tooling, harnesses, fuzzers, and test automation to make bitcoin and custody security testing repeatable, scalable, and continuous.