1

Adversarial Emulation Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

Research emerging threats, attack vectors, and adversarial techniques to inform offensive and ... threat emulation. Familiarity with secure software development practices and the software ...

Research emerging threats, attack vectors, and adversarial techniques to inform offensive and ... threat emulation. Familiarity with secure software development practices and the software ...

... ongoing adversarial activity to identify tactics, techniques, and procedures for emulation. • Exploit embedded systems, web and mobile apps, cloud platforms, and office and restaurant digital ...

Adversarial Emulation information

See Chicago, IL salary details

$16

$51

$77

How much do adversarial emulation jobs pay per hour?

As of Sep 7, 2026, the average hourly pay for adversarial emulation in Chicago, IL is $51.98, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $40.87 and $63.12 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is adversarial emulation?

Adversarial emulation is a cybersecurity practice in which security teams simulate real-world cyber attacks to test and improve an organization's defenses. By mimicking the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of actual threat actors, these exercises help identify vulnerabilities and gaps in security controls. Adversarial emulation often involves using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to guide realistic scenarios, ensuring organizations are better prepared against genuine threats.

What are some common challenges faced by professionals in adversarial emulation, and how can they be addressed?

Professionals in Adversarial Emulation often encounter challenges such as staying current with rapidly evolving threat landscapes, accurately simulating sophisticated attacker behaviors, and maintaining clear communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Addressing these requires continuous learning through threat intelligence updates, leveraging automation tools for realistic attack simulations, and collaborating closely with blue teams to ensure findings are actionable. Building strong documentation and reporting skills also helps bridge gaps between different teams and ensures that emulation exercises lead to meaningful improvements in organizational security.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as an adversarial emulation specialist, and why are they important?

To thrive as an Adversarial Emulation Specialist, you need deep knowledge of cybersecurity, penetration testing methodologies, and threat actor tactics, often supported by degrees in computer science or cybersecurity and certifications like OSCP or CISSP. Expertise with technical tools such as Cobalt Strike, Metasploit, and various red teaming frameworks is commonly required. Strong analytical thinking, problem-solving, and clear communication skills help you effectively simulate threats and report findings to stakeholders. These skills are crucial for accurately assessing organizational vulnerabilities and enhancing overall security posture.

What is the difference between Adversarial Emulation vs Penetration Tester?

AspectAdversarial EmulationPenetration Tester
CredentialsSecurity certifications, such as CISSP, CEHSecurity certifications, such as OSCP, CEH
Work EnvironmentSimulates real-world attack scenarios to test defensesConducts controlled security assessments to identify vulnerabilities
Industry UsageUsed in cybersecurity to evaluate security postureCommonly hired for security testing and vulnerability assessments

Adversarial Emulation and Penetration Testing both aim to identify security weaknesses. However, Adversarial Emulation focuses on mimicking sophisticated attacker behaviors to test defenses in a realistic manner, while Penetration Testing involves systematic vulnerability scans and exploits to find security flaws. Both roles require similar certifications and are integral to cybersecurity strategies, but their approaches and objectives differ slightly.

What are popular job titles related to Adversarial Emulation jobs in Chicago, IL?

For Adversarial Emulation jobs in Chicago, IL, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What job categories do people searching Adversarial Emulation jobs in Chicago, IL look for?

The top searched job categories for Adversarial Emulation jobs in Chicago, IL are:

Cyber Threat Defense Sr AI/ML Engineer

BofA Securities

Chicago, IL • On-site

Full-time

PTO

Posted 7 days ago


Job description

Job Description:

At Bank of America, we are guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better through the power of every connection. We do this by driving Responsible Growth and delivering for our clients, teammates, communities and shareholders every day.
Being a Great Place to Work is core to how we drive Responsible Growth. This includes our commitment to being an inclusive workplace, attracting and developing exceptional talent, supporting our teammates' physical, emotional, and financial wellness, recognizing and rewarding performance, and how we make an impact in the communities we serve.
Bank of America is committed to an in-office culture with specific requirements for office-based attendance and which allows for an appropriate level of flexibility for our teammates and businesses based on role-specific considerations.
At Bank of America, you can build a successful career with opportunities to learn, grow, and make an impact. Join us!

Job Description:

Bank of America's Global Information Security (GIS) team is seeking a Cyber Threat Defense Sr AI/ML Engineer to build and integrate advanced AI and machine learning capabilities into our cyber defense ecosystem. This person will drive innovation across preventative, detective, and responsive security controls by engineering the full spectrum of intelligent automation: deterministic and scripted automation, custom machine learning models, large language models (LLMs), and agentic AI systems. This is a senior individual contributor role balancing hands-on engineering with technical leadership, working closely with leadership and engineering teams to drive AI integration into cyber defense.

This engineer will focus on applying AI to defend against modern threats, including threat actors who are themselves leveraging AI, and will partner with security subject matter experts across GIS on defending the bank's own use of AI. The ideal candidate is an experienced AI/ML engineer with deep fundamentals in machine learning theory and practice, strong production engineering discipline, and a working understanding of cybersecurity, who knows that the right solution is sometimes a script, sometimes a model, and sometimes an agent.

Role Responsibilities
  • Design, build, and deploy AI-powered capabilities for threat hunting, anomaly detection, and automated incident response over large-scale security telemetry.
  • Develop and operationalize custom machine learning models and LLM-based workflows tailored to cybersecurity use cases, owning the lifecycle from data preparation and feature engineering through training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
  • Match the technique to the problem: apply deterministic automation, classical machine learning, or generative AI (or a combination) based on the problem structure, the available data, and the operational risk profile.
  • Build LLM-based tooling that multiplies analyst effectiveness, such as investigation support, detection engineering assistance, and knowledge retrieval.
  • Partner with GIS operational and technical teams to identify opportunities for AI-driven enhancements to security controls and architecture.
  • Prototype and evaluate emerging AI technologies for applicability in cyber threat detection and response.
  • Collaborate with offensive security teams to develop AI-enhanced red teaming and adversarial emulation capabilities.
  • Contribute to architectural decisions that support scalable, well-governed AI integration across GIS security controls.
  • Promote responsible and ethical use of AI in security operations, partnering with model governance stakeholders on bias mitigation and explainability.
  • Act as a technical expert on AI-driven cybersecurity initiatives, advising senior leadership and mentoring engineers and analysts.
Required Qualifications
  • 7+ years of hands-on machine learning engineering experience, including fine-tuning, evaluating, and deploying custom models in production.
  • Strong command of machine learning fundamentals, including model training and evaluation (model weights, loss functions, precision, recall, F1, calibration), feature engineering, embeddings, and real-world data issues such as class imbalance, label noise, and model drift. Candidates whose AI experience consists primarily of using generative AI tools, agents, or APIs will not meet this bar; candidates should expect to discuss models they have personally trained and evaluated.
  • Proficiency in Python and hands-on experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or scikit-learn, including model evaluation harnesses and experiment tracking.
  • Hands-on experience building LLM-powered applications and agentic AI systems (e.g., retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning, tool use, orchestration), grounded in the ML fundamentals above.
  • Experience delivering production systems at scale involving data pipelines, model deployment, MLOps, and automation.
  • Experience with enterprise cloud AI development platforms (e.g., Azure AI Foundry, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI) or equivalent open-source or self-hosted model infrastructure.
  • Working understanding of cybersecurity fundamentals (the attack lifecycle, common attacker techniques, and defensive controls) and of how AI can enhance defensive operations.
  • Familiarity with AI governance and model risk management concepts, such as model validation, explainability, and responsible AI.
  • Strong communication and presentation skills, including the ability to translate complex technical concepts for senior executives and cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, a related quantitative field, or equivalent applied experience; advanced degree (MS/PhD) preferred.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience applying ML or AI to cybersecurity problems such as detection engineering, threat hunting, malware analysis, or security automation.
  • Experience working with security telemetry at scale (e.g., EDR, SIEM, network, or identity data).
  • Understanding of offensive security tactics and threat actor behaviors, and of how AI can enhance red teaming, attack path mapping, and threat modeling.
  • Hands-on offensive security experience (e.g., CTF competitions, red team tooling development, or published security research).
  • Experience with the open-source LLM ecosystem (e.g., Hugging Face, LangChain), LLM guardrails, and agent orchestration frameworks.
  • Familiarity with adversarial machine learning and AI security risks.
  • Experience with AI-enhanced SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) platforms.
  • Prior work in regulated industries, including model risk and compliance considerations in financial services.

Skills:

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Critical Thinking
  • Threat Analysis
  • Cyber Security
  • Data Privacy and Protection
  • Data and Trend Analysis
  • Stakeholder Management

This job will be open and accepting applications for a minimum of seven days from the date it was posted.

Shift:

1st shift (United States of America)

Hours Per Week:

40

Pay Transparency details

US - CO - Denver - 1144 15th St - Denver Gis (CO9926), US - DC - Washington - 1800 K St NW - 1800 K Street NW (DC1842), US - IL - Chicago - 540 W Madison St - Bank Of America Plaza (IL4540), US - MA - Boston - 100 Federal St - 100 Federal St Lp (MA5100), US - NJ - Jersey City - 101 Hudson St - 101 Hudson (NJ2101)Pay and benefits informationPay range$145,000.00 - $192,500.00 annualized salary, offers to be determined based on experience, education and skill set.Discretionary incentive eligibleThis role is eligible to participate in the annual discretionary plan. Employees are eligible for an annual discretionary award based on their overall individual performance results and behaviors, the performance and contributions of their line of business and/or group; and the overall success of the Company.BenefitsThis role is currently benefits eligible. We provide industry-leading benefits, access to paid time off, resources and support to our employees so they can make a genuine impact and contribute to the sustainable growth of our business and the communities we serve.