Principal Threat Hunter

Principal Threat Hunter (Remote, US) Location: Remote, United States Team: Product & Engineering Employment Type: Full-Time, Remote About VulnCheck Exploitation prevention is only as strong as the intelligence driving those efforts, and most of the industry is still running on intelligence that lacks exploit context. VulnCheck, The Exploit Intelligence Company, delivers structured exploit intelligence on what is actively weaponized in the wild, purpose-built for the data lakes, ETL pipelines, automation, and AI and LLM workflows your infrastructure already runs on, raising the capability of everything it powers. About the Role VulnCheck is hiring a Principal Threat Hunter to discover, investigate, and document real-world exploitation and attacker infrastructure, and turn those discoveries into durable improvements to VulnCheck's detection capabilities. VulnCheck operates infrastructure across the internet that gives us a direct view into attacker activity. Canary Intelligence deploys intentionally vulnerable systems and captures real exploitation attempts, giving researchers a steady stream of attacker binaries, source infrastructure, payloads, and exploitation techniques. Target Intelligence maintains a continuously updated view of internet-facing systems, including their exposure to known vulnerabilities and their relationships to scanners, proxies, C2 infrastructure, and other attack infrastructure. Together, these datasets provide a foundation for research that is difficult to replicate elsewhere. You can observe exploitation as it happens rather than infer it from secondary telemetry, analyze what attackers deploy after gaining access, and pivot from an attacking host into the broader infrastructure behind it. The role spans the full research process. You will hunt for interesting activity, investigate what you find, develop methods and detections to identify similar activity at scale, and turn those investigations into original threat intelligence. You will help build the tooling and detections needed to support your research and improve VulnCheck's ability to identify meaningful attacker activity. You will be the first full-time threat hunter at VulnCheck, so there is no existing threat hunting pipeline or playbook to inherit. You will have substantial latitude to define areas of research and help establish how VulnCheck approaches threat hunting as the function grows. This role is fully remote and open to candidates based anywhere in the United States. What You'll Do • Hunt for emerging exploitation activity, attacker infrastructure, and novel attacker behavior across VulnCheck's data • Turn discoveries from threat hunting into durable improvements to VulnCheck's detection capabilities, including new rules, queries, tooling, and automation • Investigate exploitation attempts, attacker payloads, binaries, infrastructure, and post-exploitation activity • Build tooling and automation to support threat hunting and large-scale analysis • Pivot across vulnerabilities, hosts, IPs, domains, payloads, and other infrastructure to uncover relationships and broader activity • Turn research findings into actionable threat intelligence for VulnCheck customers • Write customer-facing threat intelligence reports and technical blog posts that clearly explain what you found and why it matters • Present research at conferences and other industry events • Work with vulnerability researchers and other members of the VulnCheck research team to connect observed exploitation with vulnerability intelligence • Help shape the direction, methodology, and capabilities of VulnCheck's threat hunting function as it grows • Use VulnCheck's data and products as an expert customer, identify gaps in our ability to detect or investigate attacker activity, and help drive improvements to close those gaps What You'll Bring • A demonstrated track record of communicating technical security research through public writing, threat intelligence reports, blogs, presentations, or other published work • Experience hunting for threats, analyzing attacker activity, conducting threat intelligence research, or performing closely related security research • The ability to read and analyze PCAPs and reason about network traffic and protocols • Demonstrated experience developing and tuning detections, including Suricata and/or Snort rules, and translating research findings into repeatable detection capabilities • Experience writing Nuclei templates or other scanners to identify vulnerabilities, exposed services, or attacker infrastructure • Strong programming or scripting ability, with comfort reading and writing code in multiple languages and picking up unfamiliar languages when the research requires it • Experience working with Linux systems, networking, and internet-facing infrastructure • The ability to analyze malware, payloads, scripts, and other artifacts encountered during an investigation • Experience working with large datasets and developing queries or tooling to find meaningful activity within them • The ability to pivot across technical data sources and follow an investigation from an initial indicator to a broader set of infrastructure or activity • The curiosity and independence to identify interesting research questions and pursue them without a predefined playbook Preferred Qualifications • A substantial body of published security research, particularly work that has had an impact on the security community • Experience researching exploitation campaigns, malware families, attacker infrastructure, or vulnerability exploitation in the wild • Experience working across multiple areas of security research, such as vulnerability research, reverse engineering, malware analysis, threat intelligence, or detection engineering • Experience leading threat intelligence or security research initiatives, including establishing research direction, methodologies, or operational processes What We Offer We believe people do their best work when they feel supported, trusted, and valued. VulnCheck offers benefits designed to meet a wide range of needs and lifestyles: Benefits and Perks • Unlimited PTO • 401k plan • Comprehensive healthcare coverage • Generous paid parental leave • Remote friendly environment with flexibility • Expense reimbursement for Cell Phone & Internet • Ongoing professional development, coaching, and learning resources • Opportunities for career advancement within a fast-growing team Why Join Us Built on over two decades of cybersecurity experience, our team of experts understands the intricacies of vulnerabilities, their exploitation in the wild, and how to leverage this data to build more effective cybersecurity products that produce better outcomes for organizations. VulnCheck gives organizations a tactical advantage by providing best-in-class exploit & vulnerability intelligence information. We have a sense of duty to protect the critical infrastructure we rely on including medical devices, power grids and telecommunication networks. We were founded in 2021 in Lexington, Massachusetts. VulnCheck has a transparent, collaborative, and supportive culture — we are looking for people who have a growth mindset, are curious and innovative. Our team is smart, but humble, hardworking, and supportive. VulnCheck is proud to be an Equal Employer Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. VulnCheck is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. Even if your experience doesn't perfectly align with the job description, we encourage you to apply — we value potential just as much as a perfect resume.