Senior Researcher/Expert – Mobile Operating System Security

Senior Researcher / Expert – Mobile Operating System Security

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Researcher / Expert in Mobile Operating System Security to join an advanced systems security research team based in Helsinki, Finland.

The role focuses on researching next-generation security technologies for smartphones, tablets, and other connected consumer devices. You will investigate emerging security challenges, design and evaluate new protection mechanisms, build proof-of-concept systems, and help transition successful research into future commercial platforms.

The position covers one or more of the following areas:

• Operating system kernel, driver, system service, privilege boundary, and access-control security.

• Hardware-assisted security using modern processor architectures and System-on-Chip security capabilities.

• Compiler-based security, memory safety, control-flow protection, and runtime instrumentation.

• JavaScript and other language runtime security, including interpreters, compilers, virtual machines, and JIT components.

• Fuzzing, static and dynamic analysis, symbolic or concolic execution, binary analysis, and automated vulnerability discovery.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyse previous research, emerging attacks, and evolving threat models relevant to mobile operating systems and consumer devices.

• Identify new research opportunities in platform, kernel, runtime, compiler, and hardware-assisted security.

• Develop security proposals based on clearly defined threat models, deployment constraints, and practical product requirements.

• Design, implement, and evaluate proof-of-concept security mechanisms and research prototypes.

• Assess security effectiveness, compatibility, performance overhead, and deployment feasibility.

• Conduct vulnerability research, attack-surface analysis, and security architecture evaluation.

• Work with engineering and platform teams to translate successful research into deployable security technologies.

• Apply AI-assisted techniques to security analysis, vulnerability research, prototyping, testing, and engineering workflows.

• Explore automated approaches for vulnerability discovery, root-cause analysis, exploitability assessment, and security mitigation.

• Communicate technical findings through research reports, design documents, technical presentations, demonstrations, and proposals.

• Collaborate with internal researchers, engineers, academic institutions, and external technical partners.

• Contribute to patents, publications, prototypes, and longer-term security research initiatives.

Essential Requirements

• Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Cybersecurity, or a related technical field, or equivalent relevant industry experience.

• Deep technical expertise in at least one area of operating system, hardware, compiler, runtime, or program-analysis security.

• Strong knowledge of modern operating system security concepts and architectures.

• Experience with platforms such as Android, Linux, other mobile operating systems, or comparable embedded and consumer-device platforms.

• Familiarity with modern processor security architectures, including Arm-based platforms or comparable hardware architectures.

• Strong systems programming and prototyping skills.

• Experience with one or more low-level languages such as Assembly, C, C++, or Rust.

• Experience with threat modelling, attack-surface analysis, vulnerability research, exploit mitigation, security architecture evaluation, or security testing.

• Ability to take technical concepts from initial research through prototype implementation and evaluation.

• Strong debugging, analytical, and problem-solving skills.

• Strong technical writing and presentation skills in English.

• Ability to collaborate effectively across multidisciplinary research and engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with kernel, driver, system service, or privilege-boundary security.

• Knowledge of trusted execution environments, hardware roots of trust, memory protection, isolation, or secure execution mechanisms.

• Experience with compiler and runtime security techniques such as control-flow integrity, memory-safety enforcement, sanitisation, or instrumentation.

• Experience analysing language runtimes, virtual machines, interpreters, JIT compilers, or scripting engines.

• Experience with fuzzing frameworks, static analysis, dynamic analysis, symbolic execution, concolic execution, or binary analysis.

• Experience developing automated vulnerability discovery or exploit-mitigation systems.

• Understanding of mobile platform security architecture, application sandboxing, permission models, secure boot, or trusted computing.

AI-Assisted Security Experience

Experience applying large language models or other AI methods to security research is highly valued, including:

• AI-assisted fuzzing and test generation.

• Program analysis and vulnerability discovery.

• Security specification or policy generation.

• Crash triage and root-cause analysis.

• Exploitability assessment.

• Automated mitigation development.

• Binary or source-code analysis.

• Security research assistants or automated investigation tools.

Experience designing agentic AI systems for multi-step security workflows would be particularly relevant. This may include systems capable of coordinating analysis tools, investigating vulnerabilities, generating tests, validating findings, or assisting with the design and evaluation of security mechanisms.

Candidate Profile

The successful candidate will combine deep systems-security expertise with strong practical engineering capability.

You should be comfortable working across operating systems, processor architecture, compilers, language runtimes, and security research, and be able to move between theoretical security analysis and hands-on prototype development.

The role is particularly suited to researchers who enjoy taking new security concepts from initial threat analysis through experimentation, implementation, evaluation, and potential deployment.

Position Details

Location: Helsinki, Finland
Employment type: Full-time
Seniority: Senior Researcher / Expert