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Red Team Operator Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

AIUC-1 Standard

San Francisco, CA · On-site

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

We red-team, certify, and insure agents, e.g., Harvey, ElevenLabs, UiPath, Fin. Soon, agents will ... Comfort operating with speed and ambiguity; excitement to take action and develop a perspective ...

Operations Lead

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$120K - $300K/yr

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

We red-team, certify, and insure agents - working with AI category leaders like ElevenLabs, Lovable ... consulting, finance, operating) we trust to learn ops fast. * A killer smart generalist ...

Senior Security Engineer

Los Angeles, CA

$123K - $169K/yr

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Life

  • Retirement

  • PTO

Headquartered in Singapore, with more than 15,000 employees operating from offices around the world ... Red Team / Adversarial Exercises: Participate in offensive and defensive security exercises (attack ...

Senior Security Engineer

Los Angeles, CA · On-site

$91K - $149K/yr

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Life

  • Retirement

  • PTO

Headquartered in Singapore, with more than 15,000 employees operating from offices around the world ... Red Team / Adversarial Exercises: Participate in offensive and defensive security exercises (attack ...

... operating private or hybrid OpenStack clouds. • Strong expertise in Ansible, Terraform, Git, and ... Founded in 1988, the company is headquartered in San Jose, USA, with a team of 10001+ employees.

Agentic Risk Analyst

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$288K - $425K/yr

Partner with colleagues who lead evaluations, scenario analyses, tabletop exercises, red-team ... operating processes and tools that improve organizational coordination and follow-through on ...

Lead incident response preparedness initiatives, including tabletop exercises, red team engagements ... Operated in a public company environment with SOX, ISO 27001, SOC 2, or FedRAMP requirements

Perform red team/offensive assessments against firmware & devices. * Triage and recommend solutions ... Deep knowledge of Linux-based operating system internals & network protocols. * Knowledge of ...

Showing results 21-40

Red Team Operator information

See California salary details

$10

$19

$28

How much do red team operator jobs pay per hour?

As of Aug 17, 2026, the average hourly pay for red team operator in California is $19.80, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $16.59 and $21.83 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a red team operator?

Red Team Operators are cybersecurity professionals who simulate real-world cyberattacks to identify vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems, processes, and defenses. Their goal is to mimic the tactics, techniques, and procedures of actual adversaries to test an organization’s security posture. By doing so, they help organizations understand their weaknesses and improve their response capabilities. Red Team Operators often work closely with Blue Teams (defenders) to provide actionable insights and recommendations for strengthening security.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a red team operator?

To thrive as a Red Team Operator, you need a deep understanding of cybersecurity concepts, penetration testing methodologies, and knowledge of network and application security, often supported by certifications like OSCP or CEH. Proficiency with tools such as Metasploit, Cobalt Strike, Nmap, and Burp Suite is typically required. Strong analytical thinking, creativity, and effective communication are essential soft skills for simulating adversarial attacks and reporting findings. These skills and qualities are crucial for identifying vulnerabilities, improving organizational defenses, and ensuring resilient security postures.

What are some common challenges red team operators face when simulating real-world cyber attacks within an organization?

Red Team Operators often encounter challenges such as navigating complex security controls, dealing with limited information about the target environment, and maintaining stealth to avoid detection by blue teams. They must balance realism with safety, ensuring that operations do not disrupt critical business functions. Collaboration with other security professionals is essential, especially during post-engagement debriefs to share findings and improve the organization's defenses. Managing time and scope within engagement constraints can also be a demanding aspect of the role.

What is the difference between Red Team Operator vs Penetration Tester?

AspectRed Team OperatorPenetration Tester
CertificationsOSCP, CEH, GPENOSCP, CEH, GPEN
Work EnvironmentSimulates real-world attacks, often in complex, multi-layered scenariosFocuses on identifying vulnerabilities through controlled testing
Employer & Industry UsageUsed by security teams to assess organizational security postureHired by organizations or consulting firms to find security flaws

Red Team Operators and Penetration Testers share similar certifications and often work in overlapping environments. However, Red Team Operators focus on simulating real-world, multi-faceted attacks to test defenses, while Penetration Testers typically identify specific vulnerabilities through targeted testing. Both roles are essential for comprehensive cybersecurity assessments.

How much does it cost to become a certified red team operator?

Becoming a certified red team operator typically involves obtaining industry-recognized certifications such as OSCP, OSCE, or CREST, which can cost from a few hundred to several thousand dollars depending on the certification and training provider. Additional costs may include training courses, lab access, and practice exams, with some employers providing sponsorship or reimbursement for certification expenses.

What cities in California are hiring for Red Team Operator jobs?

Cities in California with the most Red Team Operator job openings:

Infographic showing various Red Team Operator job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 87% Full Time, and 13% Contract. Highlights an 100% In-person job distribution, with an average salary of $41,191 per year, or $19.8 per hour.

Detection & Response Security Engineer

Harvey

San Francisco, CA • On-site

$188K - $282K/yr

Full-time

Re-posted 10 days ago


Job description

Why Harvey
At Harvey, we're transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we're reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.
This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. We have strong product-market fit and world-class investor support. We're scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth - personal, professional, and financial - is unmatched.
Our team moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission - operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job's Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we'd love to build with you.
At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today - and we're just getting started.
Role Overview
Some of the world's largest companies and their law firms use Harvey's AI capabilities to deliver world-class client services at unprecedented scale and efficiency. Harvey allows high-performing professionals to gain deep domain knowledge faster, understand the big picture, and tackle more complex challenges in less time.
Our customers depend on us to deliver a secure, trustworthy, and compliant platform. Earning the trust of our customers is a business enabler and we value it more than anything else.
We are looking for an offensive security minded blue teamer to help us proactively identify and mitigate all threats against Harvey. Your offensive security expertise will be key in prioritizing the right defenses, modeling threats against our infrastructure, and chasing down leads. You will have the opportunity to build your Software Engineering and System Design skills as you're working on our state of the art agentic threat detection platform built on ClickHouse.
As an early member of our Security Detection and Response team, you will play a key role in shaping the foundation of our Detection and Response program. We are a small but effective team and have a high bar for our work.
Our security program at Harvey is driven by our collective offensive security experience: Breaking into systems at other companies (in white-hat capacities), responding to real security incidents, and learning from other companies' data breaches. We conduct regular pentests and red team exercises with external security firms. At the same time, we are all software engineers, contributing code daily, and approaching security topics with an engineering-first approach.
What You'll Do
  • Build strong relationships with key employees across the organization
  • Use your offensive security expertise to develop plausible threat scenarios and identify opportunities for detection
  • Assess logs for gaps and implement additional logging as needed
  • Build out sophisticated data pipelines to handle increasing volumes of data and enrich our observability
  • Lead incident response, as needed
  • Develop detection rules and a process for keeping them effective in collaboration with our other D&R Engineers
  • Participate in table-top and redteam exercises to evaluate efficacy

What You Have
  • Demonstrated ability to find weaknesses (e.g. privilege escalation) in real-world corporate networks, cloud environments, or applications
  • Hands-on experience responding to security incidents
  • Strong understanding of computer networks, operating systems, and cryptographic protocols
  • 4+ years of experience in Security, Software Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, or related disciplines
Nice to Have
  • Experience working at a small company, smaller independent division of larger company, or a hyper-growth startup
  • Experience with ClickHouse or similar data warehouses
  • Red team experience
  • Experience in incident commander role, managing security incidents or other disasters

Compensation
$188,000 - $282,000
Depending on your location, an Applicant Privacy Notice may apply to you. You can find all of our Applicant Privacy Notices [here].
#LI-KV1
Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing accommodations@harvey.ai