Security Research Engineer

Integration Innovation • Arlington, VA

6d

About The Position

i3 is building a new security research team and seeks an engineer who combines practical security research with software development and automation skills. The engineer will contribute to triage, vulnerability analysis, proof-of-concept development, and reporting while building LLM harnesses and research infrastructure to support the team. Hands-on experience building or substantially extending an LLM or agent harness is required.

The role involves working with researchers to turn useful investigation techniques into dependable tools, and maintaining reusable scripts, research environments, and documentation. The position requires an active Top Secret/SCI clearance and U.S. citizenship.

The stated pay range is $118,000–$203,000. This range is a general guideline and not a guarantee of compensation; offer considerations may include responsibilities, education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, internal equity, market data, geographic location, and applicable laws.

i3 is a technically diverse, 100% team member-owned business headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama. It specializes in missile and aviation systems engineering and logistics, electronic warfare and electromagnetic effects analysis, UAS integration and flight operations, C5ISR engineering, cybersecurity and IT/IA solutions, and virtual training, simulation, and serious game development. i3 supports DoD military services, the Missile Defense Agency, NASA, other government organizations, and private industry customers.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of experience in security research, software engineering, security tooling, or closely related work.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field; additional years of experience may substitute for the degree.
• Demonstrated vulnerability analysis experience, including reproducing issues and understanding their root causes.
• Strong programming skills and experience building tools that others can use and maintain.
• Practical experience building or substantially extending LLM harnesses, including tool integration and troubleshooting.
• Familiarity with reverse engineering, debugging, and proof-of-concept development.
• Clear technical writing skills and the ability to document evidence, assumptions, and limitations.
• Active Top Secret/SCI security clearance.
• U.S. citizenship.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with sandboxed execution, fuzzing infrastructure, automated evaluations, or reproducible research environments.

Responsibilities

• Triage findings, reproduce vulnerabilities, and support root-cause analysis and proof-of-concept development.
• Build and maintain LLM harnesses that connect models with research tools, relevant context, and execution environments.
• Develop automation for code and binary analysis, experimentation, evidence collection, and report generation.
• Improve workflow reliability through logging, execution controls, reproducibility, and evaluations.
• Verify generated code and findings against observable system behavior.
• Maintain reusable scripts, research environments, and documentation.
• Work with researchers to turn useful investigation techniques into dependable tools.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level