Demo

Principal Investigator

Motion Recruitment
Arlington, VA Full Time
POSTED ON 6/19/2026 CLOSED ON 7/18/2026

What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Investigator position at Motion Recruitment?

A leading embedded security firm is hiring a Principal Investigator to join their reverse engineering and vulnerability research team. This is a full time, hybrid role in the DC metro area focused on embedded hardware, firmware, low level reverse engineering, vulnerability discovery, and exploit development.

This role is not limited to Federal work. You will have the opportunity to support both Federal programs and Commercial Fortune 500 customers across products and services engagements. The company is looking for someone who can stay deeply hands on while also spending roughly 20% of their time leading, managing, and growing other RE/VR researchers. The team is highly research driven, and this is deeply hands on, low level work where you will lead reverse engineering efforts across embedded hardware and firmware, identify vulnerabilities through advanced analysis techniques, and develop both offensive and defensive tooling.

Required Skills & Experience

  • 8 years of experience in reverse engineering, vulnerability research, or exploit development
  • Strong background in embedded systems, firmware, and low level architectures
  • Proficiency in C or C and Python
  • Experience with static and dynamic analysis techniques
  • Assembly experience across at least one major architecture
  • Prior experience leading technical research efforts or mentoring RE/VR engineers
  • Active clearance or ability to obtain one

Desired Skills & Experience

  • Experience with fuzzing, side channel analysis, or hardware attacks
  • Familiarity with ARM, AARCH64, MIPS, or PPC
  • Experience with exploit development, secure boot bypasses, or privilege escalation
  • Experience with JTAG, UART, or other hardware interfaces
  • Experience developing internal tooling or research platforms

What You Will Be Doing

  • Leading reverse engineering and vulnerability research across embedded hardware and firmware
  • Developing offensive and defensive capabilities through low level analysis and exploit development
  • Mentoring and growing RE/VR researchers while remaining hands on technically
  • Supporting both Federal and Commercial customer engagements
  • Building tooling and automation to improve research and vulnerability discovery workflows
  • Contributing to long term research initiatives and technical strategy

Tech Breakdown

  • 60% Hands On Reverse Engineering and Vulnerability Research
  • 20% Leadership, Mentorship, and Research Oversight
  • 20% Customer Engagement, Tooling, and Internal Research Initiatives

Posted By: Patrick Fuller

Salary : $250,000 - $270,000

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