Offensive Security Lead

Remote from: Europe
Annual salary: Undisclosed
Salary information is not provided for this position. Check our Salary Directory to estimate the average compensation for similar roles.
Department: Cybersecurity
Employment type: Full Time,
Job posted: 16 Jul 2026
Apply before: 16 Aug 2026
Experience level: Senior
Views / Applies: 19 / 0

Nebius is the AI cloud company, delivering a unified platform that spans the complete AI journey from data and model training and tuning to production runtime and deployment.

Computer Software
2023

Actively Hiring

AI Summary

Nebius is seeking an Offensive Security Lead to build and run its internal red team within the Product Security Team. This hands-on leadership role involves designing and executing adversarial simulations across the cloud platform, including GPU infrastructure, inference stacks, and managed services. The candidate will establish a penetration testing program, conduct research on novel attack scenarios, and work closely with Detection & Response teams. Responsibilities include hiring offensive security engineers, automating validations, and delivering actionable reports to both technical and leadership audiences. Ideal for those with deep cloud-native security expertise and a passion for leading offensive security efforts.

Role DNA

Job Complexity

Easy Hard

Pace & Pressure

Relaxed Fast-paced

Autonomy Level

Guided Full Ownership

Communication Load

Independent Highly Collaborative

AI Insight This role requires advanced offensive security skills, leadership experience, and the ability to handle complex cloud-native environments, making it one of the hardest positions in cybersecurity.

Salary Analysis

AI Insight The salary for this role is not specified, but for a senior Offensive Security Lead in the US market, the typical range is $150,000-$280,000 per year. The median of $200,000 is competitive for a hands-on leadership position in a high-growth cloud infrastructure company.

Core Skills Required

Red Teaming Penetration Testing Cloud Security Kubernetes Security Adversary Simulation Purple Team CI/CD Security GPU Infrastructure Exploit Development Security Leadership

Cover Letter Sample

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am thrilled to apply for the Offensive Security Lead position at Nebius. With over 6 years of offensive security experience, including leading red teams and conducting adversarial simulations in cloud-native environments, I am confident in my ability to build and run your red team function. My expertise in Kubernetes privilege escalation, IAM abuse, and custom tooling aligns perfectly with the challenges of securing your AI cloud platform.

I have a proven track record of collaborating with detection and response teams to close security gaps and delivering clear, actionable reports for both technical and executive audiences. I am eager to bring my leadership and technical skills to Nebius to help protect the infrastructure that powers the global AI economy. Thank you for considering my application.

Sample Interview Questions

Describe a time you led a red team engagement that uncovered a critical vulnerability in a cloud platform. How did you manage the remediation process?

In a previous role, I led a red team engagement against a multi-tenant Kubernetes environment. We discovered a misconfigured RBAC policy that allowed privilege escalation across namespaces. I worked with the platform team to prioritize the fix, provided a detailed report with mitigation steps, and validated the patch with a follow-up test. The engagement improved their security posture significantly.

How would you approach building a red team from scratch at Nebius? What are your first steps?

I would start by understanding the existing security posture, including the CI/CD pipeline, cloud architecture, and incident response capabilities. Then, I would define the scope for initial engagements, hire experienced offensive security engineers, and develop a methodology that balances automation with manual testing. I would also establish relationships with the detection team to plan purple exercises.

What is your experience with attacking GPU infrastructure or ML serving systems?

I have conducted research on GPU isolation mechanisms, including IOMMU and SR-IOV misconfigurations, and have exploited vulnerabilities in model serving frameworks like vLLM. In one project, I demonstrated a side-channel attack that leaked data across GPU partitions. I stay updated on the latest ML infrastructure attacks and adapt my testing accordingly.

How do you ensure your red team findings are actionable for both engineers and leadership?

I tailor the report format for different audiences: for engineers, I focus on technical details, reproduction steps, and specific fixes; for leadership, I present business risk, remediation priorities, and timelines. I use a risk scoring system that aligns with the organization's tolerance and always include a clear action plan.

Explain how you would conduct a purple team exercise with the Detection & Response team. What metrics do you use to measure success?

I would first define a realistic threat scenario based on our threat model. During the exercise, we simulate the attack while the blue team monitors and responds. Success metrics include detection time, response effectiveness, and the number of gaps identified. After the exercise, we debrief and improve both detection signatures and defensive measures.

About Nebius:

Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to production deployment, without the cost and complexity of building large in-house AI/ML infrastructure.

Built by engineers, for engineers. From large-scale GPU orchestration to inference optimization, we own the hard problems across compute, storage, networking and applied AI.

Listed on Nasdaq (NBIS) and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, the UK, North America and Israel. Our team of 1,500+ includes hundreds of engineers with deep expertise across hardware, software and AI R&D.

Offensive security

The internal offensive security team is responsible for the penetration testing program, red team engagements, and offensive research aimed at uncovering sophisticated attack scenarios targeting high-value assets across the Nebius Cloud stack.

The Role

We’re hiring an Offensive Security Lead to build and run Nebius’ red team capability. You’ll design and execute adversarial simulation across our cloud platform – attacking the same infrastructure our customers depend on – and translate findings into measurable security improvements.

This is a hands-on leadership role within Product Security Team. You will build an internal red team, establish a penetration testing program, and conduct research to uncover sophisticated attack scenarios targeting high-value assets across the Nebius tech stack.

What you’ll do

Build and lead a red team function within Product Security Team, hiring and developing offensive security engineers.
Validate and extend early-stage Secure SDLC threat models via continuous penetration testing, assessing threat severity and mitigation status while challenging assumptions made during threat modeling and system development. Automate routine validations to keep pace with increasing feature flow, reserving manual analysis for genuinely complex cases.
Plan and execute full-scoped red team engagements against Nebius cloud platform – including compute, storage, inference, networking, orchestration layers, and internal tooling. Identify threats, which are able to impact an organization’s operations. Work closely with Detection & Response and other security engineering teams to run purple team exercises, validate detection coverage, and close gaps collaboratively.
Research novel attacks against GPU infrastructure (e.g., closed-source firmware and vendor driver binaries, device passthrough exploits, SR-IOV/IOMMU misconfigurations, RDMA/InfiniBand fabric attacks, etc.), the inference stack (e.g., vLLM, TRT-LLM), and AI platform managed services (e.g., managed Slurm). Assess tenant-isolation boundaries and how they can be broken at the low-level stack
Conduct targeted assessments of new products and infrastructure changes before they ship.
Deliver clear, actionable reports for both technical audiences and leadership – with prioritized findings and remediation guidance.
Establish red team processes, tooling, and a methodology that scales as the platform grows.

What we’re looking for

6+ years in offensive security – penetration testing, red teaming, or adversary simulation – with at least 1-2 years leading or mentoring a team.
Deep experience attacking cloud-native environments: Kubernetes privilege escalation, cloud IAM abuse, virtualization and container escapes.
Strong fundamentals across the attack lifecycle: initial access, persistence, lateral movement, data exfiltration.
Proficiency developing custom tooling and post-exploitation capabilities (Python, Go, or similar).
Experience running purple team exercises and working constructively with blue teams.
Ability to write clear, senior-level reports with business-contextualized risk (not just raw findings) that engineers can easily use.

Nice to have

Experience attacking ML infrastructure, model serving pipelines, or GPU clusters.
Reverse engineering and exploits development experience
Application security experience
Familiarity with eBPF bypass techniques or kernel-level exploitation.
Background in vulnerability research or CVE discovery.
Experience with cloud provider internals (hypervisor/networking layers).
Presenting your security research at conferences like BlackHat/DefCon, etc.

Why this role at Nebius

Build a red team from scratch at a company operating frontier AI infrastructure.
Attack surface that’s genuinely novel – GPU clusters, AI platforms, multi-tenant cloud at scale.
Work alongside world-class engineers on infrastructure that powers frontier AI.
Competitive compensation with equity upside in a Nasdaq-listed, high-growth company.
Flexible, remote-first culture

#LI-CP1

Benefits & Perks:

Competitive compensation
Career growth and learning opportunities
Flexibility and ownership
Collaborative and innovative culture
Opportunity to work on impactful AI projects
International environment and talented teams

What’s it like to work at Nebius:

Fast moving – Bold thinking – Constant growth – Meaningful impact – Trust and real ownership – Opportunity to shape the future of AI

Equal Opportunity Statement:

Nebius is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace and to providing equal employment opportunities in all aspects of employment. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the country in which they apply and will be required to provide proof of employment eligibility as a condition of hire.

If you need accommodations during the application process, please let us know.

Apply now >