Offensive Security RL Researcher

San Francisco · USD 200,000-500,000 · 3+ years experience · Full-time · Onsite · Posted Oct 13, 2026

At a glance

idler is a frontier data research lab. We build the evals and environments that the world's leading frontier labs use to measure and train their models.
After raising a $9m seed round led by Paradigm, we spent the last year developing coding evals for top coding models you know and love. At the same time, we've expanded into other domains besides coding: RSI & Auto-Research, Law, Enterprise Business, Cybersecurity, and others. Now, we are facing more lab demand for our data than we can serve, and are rapidly scaling the team to grow the business.
Our approach to creating training data scales using technology, and all of our data products are built on a unified self-reinforcing platform that learns through experience.
You would be joining a close-knit team that has reached product market fit, and your work would directly help to multiply our revenue.
You can see some of our work here: https://idler.ai/collections

Idler is seeking an elite security researcher who can also build to lead the company's cybersecurity work.
The role involves deciding which environments to build, building and running the systems that produce them, and recruiting and managing part-time experts.
You will work directly with researchers at frontier AI labs to understand their needs and sell the environments built.

Drive the roadmap for idler's cybersecurity evals and environments, using the cybersecurity capability map to decide which environments to build next.
Build and run the systems that produce those environments yourself by writing production code.
Recruit, onboard, and manage part-time cybersecurity experts who review environments for fairness, correctness, and quality.
Work directly with researchers at frontier AI labs to understand what cybersecurity capabilities and data they want, and sell them the matching environments.

3+ years of experience in a professional cybersecurity role, with a track record that puts you in the top 5% of your peers by reputation.
Deep hands-on experience in at least one of: web app pentesting, bug bounty hunting, vulnerability/zero-day research, hacking agents, or AI security.
Well-connected within the security community.
Comfortable writing and shipping production code (Python, TypeScript, or similar).
Strong written communication to justify prioritization calls and explain findings.