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Security Research Internship

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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
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AI Summary

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.

Job Complexity

5/5
EasyHard

Pace & Pressure

4/5
RelaxedFast-paced

Autonomy Level

4/5
GuidedFull ownership

Communication Load

4/5
IndependentCollaborative
AI insightThe role requires advanced security-research capability, including finding exploitable vulnerabilities in complex systems and producing proof-of-concept exploits. A Masters or PhD track plus prior web or systems exploitation experience indicates a highly technical internship.

Salary analysis

Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.

Estimated job median (per month)Highly competitive
$5,500
US market range (per month)$3k–$8k
AI insightThe monthly pay period is inferred from the job context; it was not explicitly stated by the employer. The employer discloses compensation of $3,000 to $8,000 per month for a full-time internship, with a midpoint of $5,500 per month. This range is plausible for a US-based, graduate-level security research internship and aligns with the estimated monthly market range of $3,000 to $8,000.

Core skills

Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.

Sample interview questions
Describe a vulnerability you discovered or analyzed and how you validated its impact.

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.

How would you approach auditing a distributed system's network module for security weaknesses?

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.

What is your process for developing a proof-of-concept exploit responsibly?

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.

How can fuzzing support vulnerability discovery in systems software?

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.

What security considerations would you examine when reviewing a sandbox or virtual-machine implementation?

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.

This analysis is generated from the job description. Salary estimates, role characteristics and sample answers are guidance, not employer-provided facts.
Opportunity details

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.

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