Malware Research Engineer

🌍 We’re making security suck less for developers.

Security tools haven’t kept up with how software is built today. They interrupt teams, slow releases, and turn security into a bottleneck instead of a capability. We built Aikido to change that. Aikido builds developer-first security products that reduce real risk without getting in the way of shipping software. We focus on what actually matters and automate the rest.

We’re taking on legacy security tools teams have been stuck with, and we’re winning. If you want to help us take market share and build products developers actually enjoy using, you’re in the right place.

Founded in 2022 by third-time founders, Aikido has $85M in the bank and a long runway ahead. We’re building toward self-securing software. Join an all-star team. Take real ownership. Push boundaries. Build things that matter.

We’re looking for a Malware Research Engineer who combines strong manual research skills with the ability to automate their work. You’ll analyze malware with Binary Ninja, create YARA and Sigma rules, develop behavioral detections, and build agents that can take on more of the research and investigation process.

You should be comfortable analyzing a difficult sample by hand and then thinking about how to do the same work at scale.

Responsibilities

• Research and reverse engineer malware using Binary Ninja, dynamic analysis, and endpoint telemetry.

• Create, test, and maintain YARA, Sigma, and behavioral detection rules.

• Turn research findings into detections across files, processes, persistence, memory, identity, and network activity.

• Build agents that can triage samples, use analysis tools, extract behavior, propose detections, and validate their results.

• Build investigation workflows that correlate endpoint events, test hypotheses, and reconstruct what happened.

• Develop evals and feedback loops to measure and improve the quality of our agents and detections.

• Help define the architecture, research direction, and product capabilities of our EDR.

• Work closely with engineering to get new ideas into production quickly.

• Strong hands-on experience in malware analysis, threat research, or detection engineering.

• Experience with Binary Ninja or similar reverse-engineering tools.

• Experience creating and validating YARA, Sigma, or comparable detection rules.

• Strong programming and automation skills in a language suited to the problem.

• Understanding of executable formats, operating-system concepts, and common malware and attacker techniques.

• Familiarity with endpoint telemetry and its use in detection and investigation.

• Ability to break down a manual research workflow and automate it from first principles.

• Experience with AI agents or LLM-based workflows is useful, but a strong interest in experimenting with them is just as important.

• Comfortable working independently when the problem and solution are not yet fully defined.

Nice to have

• Experience automating Binary Ninja through its APIs.

• Experience building EDR, antivirus, sandboxing, threat-hunting, or incident-investigation systems.

• Knowledge of packers, obfuscation, process injection, memory forensics, or anti-analysis techniques.

• Experience with endpoint data collection, detection pipelines, rule deployment, or detection-as-code.

• Experience running malware-analysis or detection infrastructure at scale.

• Published security research or open-source security tooling.

What you can expect

• Short decision lines. Big ownership. Shape the projects that matter and ship fast.

• Grow as fast as we do. Take on more, own more, and carve out your own path.

• Top-tier tech pay and equity.

• High trust, strong values, zero corporate BS.

• Flexibility in working hours.

• A company that sticks to its values in an open and informal atmosphere.

We hire for talent, drive, and potential. Everything else is noise.