Role Description

We are sharing a specialised part-time consulting opportunity for software engineers with strong expertise in cybersecurity, application security, vulnerability research, and secure software engineering. This role supports high-impact research collaborations with leading AI laboratories working to improve advanced AI systems through training datasets focused on real-world coding, vulnerability analysis, and secure software reasoning. Selected professionals will help design benchmark tasks, validate exploit behaviour, verify security patches, produce structured metadata, and contribute to improving how advanced AI systems reason about cybersecurity and software engineering challenges.

Key Responsibilities

• Benchmark Task Design & Vulnerability Analysis
  • Design benchmark tasks by ideating vulnerability classes, including type, subtype, and difficulty, and validating intended exploit behaviour.
  • Create or validate small runnable codebases that include ingestion and prompt or tool usage where trust boundaries are violated.
  • Validate exploit behaviour through exploit scripts and clearly document unsafe system behaviour.
• Patch Validation & Security Review
  • Validate implementation of patches that prevent exploits and verify that fixes are effective.
  • Conduct review and quality control to ensure paths resolve correctly, line ranges are accurate, labels are not leaked, and fixes successfully block exploit behaviour.
  • Support rigorous task construction aligned with security and reproducibility standards.
• Metadata & Documentation
  • Produce task metadata such as severity mapping, exact file and line locations, impact analysis, remediation summaries, and references.
  • Document technical reasoning in clear, structured writing.
  • Help maintain high standards for reproducibility, clarity, and quality across dataset tasks.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience in software engineering with a focus on application security, vulnerability research, or secure software engineering.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Strong proficiency in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, or other common languages found in open-source projects.
• Familiarity with version control workflows such as Git, pull requests, and issue tracking.
• Ability to articulate technical reasoning in clear, structured writing.
• Strong analytical thinking and attention to detail in security-focused workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Experience working with open-source repositories and benchmark-style coding tasks.
• Familiarity with exploit validation, patch verification, and secure code review workflows.
• Comfort working in structured, research-oriented technical environments.
• Ability to contribute high-quality work in flexible, remote, project-based settings.

Benefits

• Contribute to cutting-edge AI research focused on cybersecurity and software reasoning.
• Apply real-world secure software engineering expertise to high-impact benchmark development.
• Help improve how advanced AI systems understand vulnerabilities, exploits, and remediation.
• Flexible remote work with competitive compensation.

Contract Details

• Independent contractor role.
• Fully remote with flexible scheduling.
• Compensation range of $60–$70 per hour.
• Typical commitment of 15–25 hours per week, with flexibility up to 40 hours per week.
• Project duration of approximately 1–2 months.
• Weekly payments via Stripe or Wise.
• Projects may be extended, shortened, or concluded early depending on project needs and performance.
• Work will not involve access to confidential or proprietary information from any employer, client, or institution.
• Please note: We are unable to support H1-B or STEM OPT candidates at this time.
• Start date: Immediate.

About the Platform

This opportunity is available through a leading AI-driven work platform that connects domain experts with frontier AI research projects. Experts contribute to improving advanced AI systems by providing specialised expertise across software engineering, technical reasoning, evaluation workflows, and domain-specific problem solving.