[Hiring] Principal Security Researcher & Community Advocate @Bitdefender

Role Description

You're a strong technical security practitioner - offensive security, threat research, detection engineering, endpoint / EDR, incident response, or similar - and you increasingly find yourself the one explaining the hard stuff: writing it up, giving the talk, answering in the community, mentoring. You want a role where that becomes the job. This is a deliberate career move from doing the technical work to being a respected technical voice in the community - with the runway and support to grow into it. The common thread: you actually do the work, and the voice is your own - this is a role for someone with real depth to share, not someone who repackages other people's (or an LLM's) takes.

The role in one line: Be Bitdefender's credible technical voice for technical audiences - through deep, honest content and genuine community engagement - and the technical anchor of a team that ships to security practitioners.

Why this role exists: BSG's work is research-led and prevention-first, and it's aimed at technical people who can smell marketing from a mile away. We want someone who lives in that world: who can produce content practitioners actually respect, and who is (or wants to become) a real, trusted member of the communities where those practitioners gather. You'll work directly with the researchers at Bitdefender Labs and have access to our global threat telemetry - using that vantage point to spot emerging threats, techniques, and trends early and translate them into education the wider technical community can act on.

What you'll do

• Original, deep technical content: Produce genuinely technical material for technical audiences - hands-on deep dives, threat and defense analysis, explainers, the occasional talk or workshop. Your own analysis and work, not recycled takes; substance over polish, evidence over adjectives.
• Community engagement: Be present and useful in the security communities that matter - hacker cons, user groups, CTF scenes, meetups, online spaces (BSides and the wider EU/UK con and user-group circuit, local hacker groups). Not as a booth, but as a member: contributing, answering, connecting, learning. Help our own community efforts grow over time.
• Work with Bitdefender Labs, and turn early signal into education: Partner with our threat researchers and draw on Bitdefender's global telemetry to spot new threats, techniques, and trends before they're widely understood - then translate them into clear, timely education for the technical community.
• Bring the field back in: Surface what practitioners actually care about and are struggling with, so our technical content stays relevant and grounded.
• Grow the craft (and yourself): Build your public technical voice - with room to develop the speaking, writing, and community-building muscles if you're earlier on that path.

Qualifications

• Deep, hands-on technical security background - practitioner-level in one or more of: offensive security / red teaming, threat research, detection engineering, endpoint security / EDR / XDR, incident response. You've done the work, not just talked about it. This is the non-negotiable.
• A real pull toward sharing and community - you already write, speak, contribute, mentor, or hang out where practitioners do, even if it isn't your full-time job yet.
• Excellent technical communication - you write and explain the way practitioners want to read and hear it, and you instinctively avoid hype ("industry-leading", "best-in-class") in favour of specifics.
• Roots or genuine ties in security communities - user groups, cons, meetups - or a credible, already-started path toward them.
• UK or EU based.
• Self-directed - this is a Principal IC role; you'll own your patch and set your own bar.

Bonus points

• A public body of technical work - published research, talks, open-source, tooling, CTF results, advisories.
• An existing network on the EU/UK con and user-group circuit.
• Comfort with scripting / tooling (e.g. Python) to build or automate your own technical work.
• Multilingual across key EU markets.

What success looks like (first 6–12 months)

• A credible, growing technical presence - content practitioners share, and communities where you're a known and trusted member.
• The team's external technical substance is measurably sounder because you're in the loop.
• The beginnings of a community program with your fingerprints on it.