Cyber Security / Reverse Engineer - European Space Agency (Redu)

About this position

The summary below is published by European Space Agency on the official vacancy notice. Our own analysis — salary realism, comparable openings, career trajectory, language profile — follows further down the page.

Key responsibilities

According to the vacancy notice, the role centres on the following duties:

• Support Project Manager with recommendations and guidance for test and evaluation laboratory capability development
• Provide regular reporting to Project Manager on assigned duties status
• Engage with and advise national customers and ESA experts on security evaluation capability development
• Derive technical requirements and review, assess, evaluate project proposals including security design, development, implementation, qualification and validation
• Foster new security application areas with emphasis on innovative concepts and cutting-edge technologies in reverse engineering and security evaluation laboratories
• Support laboratory activities as required
• Follow technological and scientific developments relevant to emerging threats, exploits and industry trends
• Contribute to other technical activities within area of expertise as requested

Are you eligible?

Check these requirements from the notice before investing time in an application:

• Education: Master's degree in a relevant field, or bachelor's degree with additional four years of relevant professional experience
• Experience: In principle, three years of relevant professional experience required with master's degree; alternatively, four additional years of relevant professional experience with bachelor's degree
• Key skills: Reverse engineering and binary analysis, Vulnerability research and security evaluation, Embedded systems, firmware and platform security, Systems, runtime and network analysis, Security evaluation methodologies and laboratory technologies, Advanced technical analysis and research, Binary analysis and static and dynamic analysis of native binaries, Disassembly and decompilation, ELF and PE analysis with ability to analyse proprietary formats, ARM/ARM64, RISC-V and x86 architecture analysis

Contract and working arrangements

Contract duration: 4 years, non-renewable.

Working arrangements: ESEC, Redu, Belgium.

Hiring unit: System Security Section (TEC-SES), End-to-End Systems Division, Systems Department, Directorate of Technology, Engineer….

Position details

Reference

1451832633

Last Verified

27 October 2026

Position overview

This is the official EU Careers listing for Cyber Security / Reverse Engineer at ESA based in Redu (Other). The vacancy reference is 1451832633.

Job Requisition ID:21078

Date Posted:27 October 2026

Closing Date:17 November 2026 23:59 CET/CEST

Publication Method:External Only

Directorate:Technology, Engineering and Quality

This is a non-renewable post for a limited duration of 4 years and open for the specific needs of a National Project.Accordingly, the external candidate selected for this post will continue to be considered an external candidate for the purposes of any future applications to the Agency.

Location ESEC, Redu, Belgium

Description

Cyber Security/Reverse Engineer in the System Security Section (TEC-SES), End-to-End Systems Division, Systems Department, Directorate of Technology, Engineering and Quality.

The System Security Section is responsible for end-to-end system security engineering for the Agency’s missions, projects and activities across space, ground and user segments and communication links, at system, subsystem, element and equipment levels. Its responsibilities span the mission lifecycle from the study phase and definition of requirements to design, development, security integration and verification, and security service preparation, across the full stack, from the physical to the application layer.

To fulfil these functions, the System Security Section defines and conducts the associated research and development (R&D) activities and studies and implements the necessary security engineering standards.

Using its security laboratory facilities, the System Security Section performs vulnerability assessments across all areas within its remit and proposes detection methods and mitigation and protection measures using security assessment tools and equipment.

This position will support a third-party activity aimed at developing a national security assessment and evaluation laboratory capability.

Duties

Your tasks and responsibilities will include:

- supporting the Project Manager by providing recommendations, guidance and plans for test and evaluation laboratory capability development and technologies for security evaluation; - regular reporting to the Project Manager on the status of the duties assigned under the project; - engaging directly with and advising national customers and ESA experts on options for developing and maturing security evaluation capabilities; - deriving technical requirements and reviewing, assessing and evaluating project proposals, including the security design, development, implementation, qualification and validation; - fostering new security application areas for multidisciplinary activities, placing emphasis on innovative concepts and cutting-edge technologies in the field of reverse engineering and security evaluation laboratories; - supporting laboratory activities as required; - continuously following technological and scientific developments relevant to the position, particularly emerging threats, exploits and industry trends; - contributing, as requested, to other technical activities beyond the main project within your area of expertise.

Technical competencies

Reverse engineering and binary analysis

Vulnerability research and security evaluation

Embedded systems, firmware and platform security

Systems, runtime and network analysis

Security evaluation methodologies and laboratory technologies

Advanced technical analysis and research

Behavioural competencies

Education and professional experience

A master’s degree in a relevant field and, in principle, three years of relevant professional experience are required for this post. Alternatively, candidates with a bachelor’s degree and an additional four years of relevant professional experience may be considered.

Additional requirements

Hands-on experience in reverse engineering, exploitation and vulnerability assessment across IT and embedded-system technologies, including but not limited to:

- binary analysis and static and dynamic analysis of native binaries; - disassembly and decompilation; - ELF and PE, with the ability to analyse proprietary formats; - popular architectures such as ARM/ARM64, RISC-V and x86; - secure boot, hardware root of trust and trusted execution environments and related vulnerabilities; - OS processes, threads and virtual memory; - firmware unpacking and repacking and identification of compression/encryption/encoding; - system call tracing; - strong C/C++ and assembly, with the ability to read unfamiliar C and assembly code fluently; - cryptographic primitives and their implementation; - capturing and analysing traffic, observing runtime behaviour, and network protocol analysis and dissecting.

Experience in the following areas would be beneficial:

- fuzzing; - reversing code for other processor architectures or families, such as Motorola and Texas Instruments; - microcode analysis; - determination of microprocessor instruction sets from extracted binary; - working with hardware evaluation teams, prototyping, debugging and simulation of changes to binaries for embedded systems.

Proficiency with Ghidra, IDA Pro, Binary Ninja, radare2, objdump/readelf, binwalk, QEMU, GDB, strace, tcpdump and Wireshark. Experience in modifying these tools and/or augmenting them with plugins, for example to support other processor architectures, is desirable.

Application timeline

This vacancy was first listed on 27 October 2026, today.

The application deadline is 17 November 2026, 20 days from today. Late applications are not accepted, so submit through the official EU Careers portal well in advance.

Last verified against the EU Careers feed on 27 October 2026.

Where to learn more

For headcount, mission, and other open vacancies at ESA see the ESA institution page; for the cost of living, correction coefficient, and other postings in Redu see our Redu location page.

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