Job Description

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

Result Orientation

Operational Efficiency

Fostering Cooperation

Relationship Management

Continuous Improvement

Forward Thinking

For more information, please refer to the ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook

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.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness

ESA is an equal opportunity employer, committed to achieving diversity within the workforce and creating an inclusive working environment. We therefore welcome applications from all qualified candidates irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious beliefs, age, disability or other characteristics.

At the Agency we value diversity, and we welcome people with disabilities. Whenever possible, we seek to accommodate individuals with disabilities by providing the necessary support at the workplace. The Human Resources Department can also provide assistance during the recruitment process. If you would like to discuss this further, please contact us via email at contact.human.resources@esa.int.

Important Information and Disclaimer

In principle, recruitment will be within the advertised grade band (A2-A4). However, if the selected candidate has less than four years of relevant professional experience following the completion of the master’s degree, the position may be filled at A1 level.

Applicants must be eligible to access information, technology, and hardware which is subject to European or US export control and sanctions regulations & eligible to acquire the security clearance by their national security administrations.

During the recruitment process, the Agency may request applicants to undergo selection tests. Additionally, successful candidates will need to undergo basic screening before appointment, which will be conducted by an external background screening service, in compliance with the European Space Agency's security procedures.

Note that ESA is in the process of transitioning to a Matrix setup, which could lead to organisational changes affecting this position.

The information published on ESA’s careers website regarding working conditions is correct at the time of publication. It is not intended to be exhaustive and may not address all questions you would have.

Nationality and Languages

Please note that applications are only considered from nationals of one of the following States: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Canada, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

According to the ESA Convention, staff shall be recruited on the basis of their qualifications, taking into account an adequate distribution of posts among nationals of the Member States.

The working languages of the Agency are English and French. A good knowledge of one of these is required. Knowledge of another Member State language would be an asset.