Suggested rewrite: Led a cross-functional initiative that improved [business outcome] by [measurable result], demonstrating experience relevant to this role...
Security Research Internship
Review the role, location requirements, compensation details, and application process before deciding whether this opportunity fits your next career move.
- Remote from
- USA
- Salary
- USD 3k–8k / mo
- Department
- Cybersecurity
- Employment
- Internship
- Experience
- Open level
- Published
- Apply before
- 15 Nov 2026
- Listing views
- 18
- Application actions
- 0
Make your next move.
Prepare your resume, explore your fit, and draft a cover letter for this opportunity.
The role, at a glance.
CertiK is seeking a graduate-level Security Research Intern to investigate security threats affecting distributed systems, blockchain-adjacent infrastructure, and applications. The role includes developing security-analysis tools, reviewing sandboxes, virtual machines, network modules, and distributed-system implementations. Interns will identify vulnerabilities, build proof-of-concept exploits, create mitigations, and publish findings in academic or industry venues. Strong foundations in vulnerability research and exploitation are required, while Rust, Go, WASM, and CTF experience are preferred. This is a research-intensive internship with broad exposure to malware analysis, anomaly detection, reverse engineering, mobile analysis, and fraud detection.
Role DNA
A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.
Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
4/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.
Core skills
Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.
Sample interview questions
I would explain the target's attack surface, the root cause, the reproduction steps, and a minimal proof of concept. I would also describe how I confirmed impact safely, proposed a remediation, and verified that the fix addressed the issue without introducing regressions.
I would first map trust boundaries, message formats, authentication, peer-discovery flows, and state transitions. Then I would use code review, fuzzing, malformed-message testing, concurrency analysis, and adversarial network simulations to identify issues such as input-validation flaws, resource exhaustion, replay attacks, and consensus-related risks.
I start by reproducing the issue in an isolated environment and minimizing the exploit to demonstrate only the necessary impact. I document prerequisites, reliability limits, and affected versions, avoid unnecessary data access or disruption, and pair the proof of concept with mitigation guidance and coordinated disclosure practices.
Fuzzing can generate unexpected or malformed inputs that expose crashes, memory-safety defects, parser bugs, and logic errors. I would define meaningful input corpora, add sanitizers and coverage instrumentation, triage crashes, minimize failing cases, and combine fuzzing results with manual root-cause analysis.
I would examine isolation boundaries, privilege transitions, host-guest interfaces, syscall or API filtering, shared-memory use, device emulation, serialization, and escape paths. I would also assess resource controls, update mechanisms, logging, and whether untrusted code can influence privileged components through malformed inputs or race conditions.
About this role.
About CertiK
One of the fastest-growing and most trusted companies in blockchain security, CertiK is a true market leader. To date, CertiK has worked with over 3,200 Enterprise clients, secured over $310 billion worth of digital assets, and has detected over 60,000 vulnerabilities in blockchain code. Our clients include leading projects such as Aave, Polygon, Yearn, and Chiliz.
Investors = Insight Partners, Sequoia, Tiger Global, Coatue Management, Lightspeed, Advent International, SoftBank, Hillhouse Capital, Goldman Sachs, Shunwei Capital, IDG Capital, Wing, Legend Star, Danhua Capital and other investors.
About the role
We are seeking security research interns to join a top-notch security research team. We are working on a wide range of security research topics, including malware analysis, vulnerability detection, network anomaly detection, mobile app analysis, reverse engineering, and fraud detections. Multiple research tasks are ready to be explored.
Responsibilities
- Develop analysis tools to facilitate security discovery and design mitigation techniques to deter security threats.
- Review system implementation of sandbox, VM, network modules, and critical distributed system.
- Perform vulnerability discovery and develop PoC exploits to large distributed system implementations.
- Publish research findings in related academic and industry venues.
Requirements
- Pursuing Masters or PhD in Computer Science or Cybersecurity related field.
- Experiences in vulnerability discovery and exploitation on web applications or system software.
Preferred
- Experiences in WASM or Rust/Go development is a plus.
- CTF experiences are a plus as well.
Compensation
Additional Information
Compensation
$3000 – $8000/month (Full Time). The exact compensation at which this internship is filled will be determined by the skills and experience of qualified candidates.
#blockchain
#startups
#hiring
CertiK accepts applications on an ongoing basis for this position until it is filled. The approximate date of closing will be April 30, 2024.
CertiK is proud to offer medical, vision, and dental insurance, 401(k) plan with company matching, life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, HSA (with high deductible plan), FSA, and other benefits to all full-time employees, along with flexible paid time off and holidays. CertiK also offers a variable commission program for business development sales roles.
In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.
CertiK is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate against any applicant or employee on the basis of age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, medical condition, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status or civil partnership/union status, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, childbirth, genetic information, military and veteran status, or any other basis prohibited by applicable federal, state or local law.
CertiK will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with local and federal requirements.
https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/migrated_files/employers/poster_screen_reader_optimized.pdf
All CertiK employees are expected to actively support diversity on their teams, and in the Company.
This job listing has been manually reviewed by the Jobicy Trust & Safety Team for compliance with our posting guidelines, including verification of the company's legitimacy, accuracy of job details, clarity of remote work policy, and absence of misleading or fraudulent content.
Apply now.
Follow the employer’s application method and review Jobicy’s safety guidance before sharing personal information.
Continue on the employer website
Protect your personal information and never pay to secure an interview or job offer. .
