Senior Attack Engineer, Kubernetes

Horizon3

1d•$206,278 - $242,680•Remote

About The Position

Horizon3 is seeking a senior offensive security engineer to lead development of Kubernetes attack capabilities for its NodeZero platform. The role researches how attackers can move from a compromised workload or identity through and beyond Kubernetes clusters, then turns that research into safe, repeatable capabilities. The engineer owns complex work from attack research and technical design through integration and customer-facing proof, and helps set the direction for Kubernetes coverage across cloud and self-managed environments. This is a technical leadership role focused on defining Horizon3’s Kubernetes offensive security strategy and shaping how Kubernetes attacks are integrated into NodeZero. The position is remote and may require up to 10% travel. Horizon3 offers competitive compensation, equity and benefits, including health, vision and dental insurance, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave.

Requirements

Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes security and offensive testing of containerized environments.
Expert-level understanding of Kubernetes architecture and identity and authorization controls, especially RBAC, service accounts, workloads, and cluster boundaries.
Strong Python engineering skills and experience productizing security research into reliable automation.
Experience with penetration testing, red teaming, vulnerability research, container security, or offensive security tooling.
Ability to lead ambiguous, cross-functional technical work and communicate attack paths and impact clearly.
A strong safety and product mindset, including the ability to distinguish theoretical weaknesses from reproducible, actionable findings and build predictable capabilities.
A record of owning complex technical projects, making sound trade-offs, and communicating clearly with technical and non-technical partners.
Strong written communication and a habit of documenting research and design decisions.

Nice To Haves

Experience with EKS, GKE, AKS, OKE, or other managed Kubernetes services.
Knowledge of Linux, containers, cloud workload identity, Kubernetes operators, Helm, or infrastructure as code.
Experience with network attack paths, container escape research, or cloud-to-cluster attack paths.
Contributions to open-source security tooling, public research, conference talks, or vulnerability disclosure.

Responsibilities

Lead offensive security research into Kubernetes clusters, workloads, identities, configurations, and cloud-connected environments.
Design and build production-quality Python attack capabilities that model realistic attacker perspectives, including an assumed-breach foothold in a pod or workload.
Develop and validate attack paths involving Kubernetes RBAC, service accounts and credentials, workloads and pods, secrets, cluster and node boundaries, network reachability, and integrations with cloud identities and managed Kubernetes services.
Assess Kubernetes security weaknesses for meaningful, provable impact and build safe validation and negative testing into capabilities.
Own technical planning for substantial Kubernetes initiatives by identifying coverage gaps, prioritizing research, making design trade-offs, and coordinating delivery with Product, platform, and engineering partners.
Integrate attack content into NodeZero’s execution and results flows so customers receive reliable evidence and clear explanations of discovered paths.
Review code and designs, establish quality expectations, mentor teammates, and share Kubernetes offensive-security expertise across the team.
Document methodologies, assumptions, limitations, and test approaches; contribute to internal and external technical enablement where appropriate.