1

Salaried Exploit Development Jobs in Austin, TX (NOW HIRING)

... exploit development, authenticated web/API testing, and adversarial review of new designs before ... This role has a base annual salary of $180,000-$210,000 plus a competitive equity and benefits ...

Salaried Exploit Development information

See Austin, TX salary details

$8

$16

$24

How much do salaried exploit development jobs pay per hour?

As of Jul 29, 2026, the average hourly pay for salaried exploit development in Austin, TX is $16.89, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $14.28 and $19.04 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are some typical challenges encountered by professionals in salaried exploit development roles?

Professionals in salaried exploit development roles often face challenges such as staying current with rapidly evolving security technologies and patch cycles. They must continuously research new vulnerabilities and develop creative solutions to bypass updated security mechanisms, which can be highly demanding. Collaborating closely with security analysts and other developers is essential to ensure responsible disclosure and risk management. Additionally, balancing project deadlines with the need for meticulous testing and documentation can be a significant challenge in this field.

What is the difference between Salaried Exploit Development vs Penetration Tester?

AspectSalaried Exploit DevelopmentPenetration Tester
CredentialsSecurity certifications, programming skillsSecurity certifications, testing experience
Work EnvironmentResearch labs, security firms, internal teamsClient sites, corporate environments, consulting firms
Industry UsageCybersecurity, offensive securityCybersecurity, vulnerability assessment

Salaried Exploit Developers focus on creating and testing exploits for security research or defensive purposes, often working in labs or R&D settings. Penetration Testers simulate attacks to identify vulnerabilities in client systems. While both roles require security knowledge and technical skills, Exploit Developers primarily develop exploits, whereas Penetration Testers perform assessments and reporting. Understanding these differences helps clarify career paths and employer expectations in cybersecurity.

What is a Salaried Exploit Developer?

A Salaried Exploit Developer is a cybersecurity professional who is employed by an organization to research, identify, and develop software exploits—ways to take advantage of vulnerabilities in computer systems or applications. Unlike freelance or independent security researchers, salaried exploit developers work as part of a security team, often within penetration testing firms, defense contractors, or tech companies. Their work can involve both offensive (discovering vulnerabilities to test defenses) and defensive (helping to patch or mitigate vulnerabilities) tasks. These roles require strong programming skills, a deep understanding of operating systems, and knowledge of security protocols. Salaried Exploit Developers may also be involved in responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities to affected vendors.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a Salaried Exploit Developer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Salaried Exploit Developer, you need deep expertise in computer science, reverse engineering, vulnerability analysis, and low-level programming, often backed by a degree in computer science or related field. Familiarity with tools like IDA Pro, Ghidra, debuggers, and operating system internals is crucial, and certifications such as OSCP or OSCE can be advantageous. Creativity, persistence, and strong problem-solving abilities are standout soft skills in this role. These qualifications are essential for identifying, developing, and responsibly handling software exploits in a secure and ethical manner.
What are the most commonly searched types of Exploit Development jobs in Austin, TX? The most popular types of Exploit Development jobs in Austin, TX are:
What are popular job titles related to Salaried Exploit Development jobs in Austin, TX? For Salaried Exploit Development jobs in Austin, TX, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Salaried Exploit Development jobs in Austin, TX look for? The top searched job categories for Salaried Exploit Development jobs in Austin, TX are:

Senior Application Security Engineer

Qualia

Austin, TX • Remote

$180K - $210K/yr

Full-time

Medical, Retirement

Re-posted 24 days ago


Job description

At Qualia, we\'ve built the leading B2B real estate technology that transforms the home buying and selling experience into a simple, secure, and enjoyable process. Our SMB and Enterprise products bring together users from across the real estate ecosystem---homebuyers and sellers, lenders, title and escrow agents, and real estate agents---onto a single shared digital closing platform, providing greater clarity and transparency to real estate transactions. Today, through our business customers across the country, millions of consumers use Qualia to close on homes every year.

WHAT YOU\'LL WORK ON

We\'re hiring a Senior Application Security Engineer to join a small, high-leverage AppSec team. This is a deep-technical IC role with a staff-leaning scope: you\'ll set the technical direction and own delivery on how we find, fix, and prevent vulnerabilities across Qualia\'s products and cloud infrastructure, and you\'ll be the person other engineers want in the room when an architecture decision has a security dimension.

You\'ll partner daily with product engineering, infrastructure, and platform teams, and you\'ll work closely alongside our existing AppSec engineers - raising the technical bar of the team while staying deeply hands-on with code, tooling, and adversarial testing. This is the right role for someone who is as comfortable writing a Burp extension or a Semgrep rule as they are pairing with a product engineer to land a fix.

RESPONSIBILITIES
  • Run offensive assessments against Qualia\'s applications and infrastructure: manual penetration testing, exploit development, authenticated web/API testing, and adversarial review of new designs before they ship
  • Lead threat modeling and secure design review for the highest-risk initiatives across the company, and mentor engineers to do the same for their own work
  • Own and evolve our AppSec tooling stack end-to-end - SAST, DAST, SCA, secret scanning, IaC scanning, and the CI/CD gates that tie them together. Build the custom rules, detections, and automation that generic tooling doesn\'t give us
  • Harden our cloud posture: review AWS configurations, IAM policies, Kubernetes/EKS workloads, and networking boundaries; build automation and guardrails that prevent the same class of issue from recurring
  • Reduce toil for the team - write the tools, scripts, and integrations that turn a day of triage into a few minutes
  • Partner with Infrastructure and Platform on detection engineering, incident response support, and cross-cutting programs (secrets management, supply chain, runtime security)
  • Set the technical bar for the AppSec team: raise the quality of reviews, establish patterns others can reuse, and mentor peers across seniority levels
  • Represent AppSec in architectural reviews, vendor evaluations, and compliance efforts
YOUR BACKGROUND THAT LIKELY MAKES YOU A MATCH
  • 8+ years of hands-on experience in application security, offensive security, or security engineering, with demonstrable depth in at least two of: offensive testing, security tooling/automation, and cloud/infra security
  • Strong offensive skills - you can manually exploit real web and API vulnerabilities beyond what a scanner will find, and you can teach others to do the same
  • Deep familiarity with building and operating security tooling in a modern engineering org: SAST/DAST/SCA pipelines, custom detection rules, secrets scanning, and CI/CD security gates. You\'ve written tooling, not just configured it
  • Production experience with AWS (IAM, VPC, networking, data services), containerized workloads (Docker, Kubernetes/EKS), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar)
  • Comfort reading, reviewing, and contributing code in at least one language common to modern web stacks (Python, Go, Ruby, TypeScript, or similar)
  • Clear, direct communication style. You can make a sharp technical argument to senior engineers, translate risk into business terms for leadership, and write a bug report an engineer actually wants to fix
  • Strong partnership instincts - you get leverage by making other teams faster, not by blocking them

NICE TO HAVE

  • Experience in fintech, proptech, healthcare, or another regulated industry where data sensitivity is high
  • Background meaningfully contributing to a bug bounty program
  • Experience with identity and access systems (OIDC, SAML, federation, fine-grained authorization)
  • Detection engineering, DFIR, or red-team experience
  • Open source contributions to security tooling, published research, or CVE credits
  • Relevant certifications (OSCP, OSWE, GWAPT, GPEN, etc.) - valued but not required

While this role is remote work eligible, we have three office locations: San Francisco, California; Concord, New Hampshire; and Austin, Texas.

This role has a base annual salary of $180,000-$210,000  plus a competitive equity and benefits package. (Salary to be determined by relevant experience, location, knowledge, and skills of the applicant, internal equity, and alignment with market data.)

WHY QUALIA

Qualia is made up of incredibly bright, mission-driven coworkers who are passionate about using technology to solve real-world problems---and we\'re growing quickly. In order to continue building an engaging and dynamic organization, we\'re committed to giving everyone the support they need to do great work.

Our benefits package is designed to allow our team members to be their best selves, both in and out of the workplace. In addition to comprehensive health plans, a 401k program, and commuter benefits, we prioritize family and personal well-being through professional development, parental leave, and a flexible time off policy. Qualia offers a robust online onboarding program to train new hires, biweekly all hands meetings, and a variety of internal virtual events to keep employees connected.

We believe diverse perspectives and backgrounds are critical to building great technology, and our goal is to cultivate an environment where people feel equally valued and respected. Qualia is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, or veteran status.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge and agree to the collection, processing, and use of your personal information as described in our Employee Data Privacy Notice.

#LI-Remote