Principal Security Researcher

Overview

GitLab is seeking a Principal Security Researcher to join our Application Security Team to conduct cutting-edge security research on GitLab's AI-powered DevSecOps capabilities. In this role, you will proactively identify and validate vulnerabilities across our GitLab DevSecOps platform, Duo Agent Platform, GitLab Duo Chat, and AI workflows. You will develop novel testing methodologies (including for AI agent security), conduct hands-on penetration testing, and translate emerging threats into actionable security improvements.

This role reports to the Senior Manager of Application Security.

What You'll Do

• Conduct and lead security research projects across multiple functional areas.
• Identify novel, systemic, and chained vulnerabilities in GitLab, where individual weaknesses combine for outsized impact.
• Validate security vulnerabilities through hands-on testing, developing proof-of-concept exploits that demonstrate real-world attack scenarios.
• Assess emerging industry vulnerability classes against the GitLab codebase, and drive remediation of the class rather than the instance.
• Lead security research into GitLab's AI and agentic surfaces, and define the security requirements that engineering teams build against.
• Build and direct the tooling and automation that scales security research, including agent-assisted vulnerability discovery across our codebase.
• Research the security posture of open source tools and dependencies integrated with GitLab, report findings to their maintainers, and track mitigation following responsible disclosure guidelines.
• Solve technical problems of the highest scope, complexity, and ambiguity.
• Help shape the team and sub-department roadmap.
• Lead the integration of security research results into engineering and business functions.
• Teach, mentor, and advise other domain experts and individual contributors across several teams.
• Share knowledge and novel vulnerability types with the security community.

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years of experience in security research, penetration testing, or offensive security roles.
• Strong ability in discovering and exploiting vulnerabilities in large codebases and complex systems.
• Proficiency in two or more of Ruby, Go, Python, TypeScript, or Rust.
• Ability to read and analyze code across multiple languages and codebases.
• Strong knowledge of AI frameworks.
• Strong understanding of AI attack vectors including prompt injection, agent manipulation, and workflow exploitation.
• Experience establishing and driving complex remediation initiatives involving cross-functional teams.
• Excellent written communication skills with an ability to articulate complex topics in a clear and concise manner.
• Ability to translate complex technical findings into clear risk assessments and remediation recommendations.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with creative thinking about attack scenarios.

Nice to Have

• Published security research or conference presentations.
• Background in software engineering with distributed systems expertise.
• Experience with GitLab or similar DevSecOps platforms.