Application Security Engineer

The opportunity: #

Cossack Labs is looking for an Application security engineer to join our Security team and work with us on building and breaking software. If you are interested in designing and building security controls, working hand-in-hand with software developers, performing security assessments, this may be the position for you!

We are a data security solutions company, developing software products (open-source and proprietary), as well as providing custom bespoke solutions to innovative development teams around the world. Our mission is to make strong security methodologies and approaches convenient within modern infrastructures and, as the software is eating the world, help it eat the world responsibly, without leaking customer’s data.

Our software is well-known amongst security-aware teams, recommended by OWASP, and popular for easily solving complicated security challenges. Apart from building “off-the-shelf” solutions, we design custom security controls for novel problems.

We work in the B2B space, with customers such as power grid operators, payment processors, legal companies, million-user customer applications. We cater to young ambitious startups and well-established enterprises, who use our software and solutions as core part of their security arsenal. Our customers are smart, but extremely demanding.

Markets: EU, UK, USA.

You will: #

• Perform security assessment and review of code and behavior of systems (web, API, backends). Perform risk analysis and threat modelling.
• Perform security search for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in software in novel fields and areas.
• Participate in SSDLC for our products and our customers’ products. Explain risks & threats, work together with developers to select security controls that would improve security without restricting usability/performance.
• Take part in organisation security practices and work with business owners (risk assessment, craft policies for organisations, guide companies for more secure future).
• Stay up to date with emerging security threats, vulnerabilities, and controls (read articles and papers, follow CVE updates, understand how threat landscape is changing, understand how to apply described ideas, read NIST guidelines).
• Dive into application security, infrastructure security, cloud and on-prem infrastructures, dedicated hardware, IoT security, ML security, and weird stuff beyond casual imagination with our team of skilled engineers. See example of our work.
• Share your work as conference talks, blogposts (see React Native security example), contribute to open source standards like OWASP.

We would expect you to have: #

• 3+ years as a application security engineer or similar position.
• Experience in performing security assessment for web applications and cloud systems.
• Experience designing and implementing security processes and security controls in a technically diverse environment.
• Be familiar with application security verification and software maturity frameworks: OWASP SAMM, OWASP ASVS, OWASP MASVS.
• Understanding SSDLC and its difficulties. OWASP SSDLC, NIST SSDF.
• Communication skills: you will communicate about security technical topics with both technical and non-technical audiences (C-level managers, developers, product owners).
• An overall understanding of what information security is, how real-world risks and threats affect the choice of security controls. How to combine detective, preventive and corrective controls.
• Experience in popular security tools required for the job, or ability to learn them quickly (Burp Suite, network analysers, various SAST and DAST, dependency and vulnerability scanners).

As a plus you’d have: #

• A certain area of expertise and deep interest: web, mobile, IoT, infrastructure – an area where you have “seen things” and ready to share experience.
• Basic knowledge in cryptography: understanding the differences between symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, hashing, KDF.
• Knowledge in one of several business domains: banking / finance / payment processing, cryptocurrencies.
• Understanding security standards and methodologies (NIST, ISO, CMMI, SOC).
• Understanding risk management and threat modelling (NIST RMF, FAIR, STRIDE, MITRE ATT&CK).
• Practical experience in scripting languages: Python or Bash.

Please note that you can be a perfect fit even if not everything we’ve outlined above applies to you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask – everyone is unique.

We offer: #

Unique area of expertise: #

• Interesting and challenging work in applied security engineering: from building to breaking. Working at the intersection of different areas: designing ML security controls, supporting cryptographic protocols with security controls, protecting hardware, building reverse-resilient mobile apps, securing web apps for million of users, etc.
• Public track record in the open source part of our products, sharing your work as blogs posts, research papers and conference talks. We work with innovative companies all over the world, move quickly and dive into technologies others just hear about.
• Combining technologies: cryptography, software engineering, information security. You won’t be bored :)
• A sense of meaning and responsibility for those who seek purpose – we’re building “invisible texture of modern civilization”—bits of infrastructure finance, power grids, healthcare rely on, and we are trusted with very challenging aspects of it.

Environment: #

• Friendly and experienced team: smart people to learn from, great people to build with. Each of us is unique, we value and support each other.
• An atmosphere that motivates you to grow and get smarter every month, a healthy ratio of routine / experimentation.
• Trust: schedule, reporting, bureaucracy is kept at reasonable minimum. We hire smart people and trust them to do the right thing. When things go wrong, we help rather than punish.
• Shared decision making: this business is driven by engineering excellence, so engineers are important part of tactical and strategical business decisions.
• Friendly to humans: not just a formal vacation and sick leave quota. Feel like your mental or physical wellbeing needs care? Take some time off. Feel like working a few days from home? Sure. As long as you’re in line, we are here to support you when you’re not.

Growth: #

• Team that facilitates internal learning and growth all the time.
• Interesting technologies to work with — sometimes, even unique ones (we design applied cryptography schemes and techniques and novel ways to use them).
• Interesting engineering challenges across the board, ability to hop from high-level system design to protocol reverse engineering and clever data modelling hacks.
• Management attention to help you improve upon your personal goals (through 1:1s and mentoring).

Benefits: #

• Competitive compensation with flexible bonus scheme.
• Sick leaves, 21 business days for vacation per year, extra days off — according to the agreements and laws.
• Conferences, books, courses — we encourage learning and sharing with the community. Our team members share a lot in talks, workshops and blog posts.

Not sure but considering? Talk to us. #

If you see yourself fit but a few things are off — don’t hesitate to talk anyway. It might be that your unique combination of skills and knowledge would be perfectly fitting for our environment, but we both just don’t know it yet.

Why work at Cossack Labs? #

Some companies prioritise talent and value proposition, while others understand business and would take any job that pays well. However, only few companies choose to specialise in difficult tasks as their primary competency.

We take on difficult jobs, we take mission-critical software and make it mission-secure.

• Virtualise OT infrastructure securely in the presence of active adversaries, preventing them from accessing the susceptible nation-wide network? ✓ Check.
• Provide immediate application security and infrastructure security guidance for mission-critical application that will be deployed on thousands of devices on the front-line tomorrow? ✓ Check.
• Validate counter-reverse engineering protections for power grid hardware to ensure that previously air-gapped environments were safe to open up to the outside world? ✓ Check.
• Ensure that software platforms for exchange of sensitive documents actually have a top-tier SSDLC programme that supplements missing capabilities and builds out processes? ✓ Check.

We operate as a lean core team and a diverse network of experts. The finest people you may work with include PhDs in information security and cryptography, infosec community standard contributors, in-depth experts in rare security topics, and business-centric security engineers with broad experiences. Some of your teammates have worked in infosec since the 1990s and saw the industry grow from nothing. Some of them helped write standards that govern security around you. Maybe someone’s work actually keeps the lights up while you’re reading this?

Our core engineers go through extensive indoctrination and training to become disciplined, stringent, self-sufficient field unit who owns the outcomes rather than just showing up for work.

As you grow into the Cossack Labs engineer, you’ll work on slow-paced projects to learn and improve, internal projects to innovate and build tools, and of course a few fires, because no smooth sea can make a skilled sailor. You’ll discover what works for you and what you need to learn.

We help innovators who are launching new venues of civilisation while facing significant security risks in becoming more secure and resilient. Customers trust us to achieve their business goals, not merely address gaps someone else has to identify first.

If this is a challenge you’re up to, let's talk!