Bugcrowd

Reinforcement Learning Engineer

Bugcrowd • $176K — $242K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years experience in reinforcement learning workflows
  • Strong background in system security, binary exploitation, and vulnerability analysis
  • Proficiency in Python and C, with knowledge of Rust being an advantage
  • Experience with DevOps pipelines and reproducible builds
  • Comfortable with Linux systems and low-level debugging techniques
  • Familiarity with large open-source codebases and benchmark environments

Responsibilities

  • Design and build systems that generate reinforcement learning environments
  • Create pipelines that analyze software projects with Bugcrowd's Mayhem platform
  • Automatically construct training environments for AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams at the intersection of AI, security research, and systems engineering
  • Enhance the capabilities of next-generation AI models by advancing training methodologies

Benefits

  • 100% remote work-from-home environment
  • Opportunity to work at the forefront of AI and cybersecurity
  • Engagement with leading AI research labs
  • Contribution to impactful projects in developing AI systems
  • Work within a collaborative community that values fairness and equality
Full Job Description
Job Summary

The Bugcrowd RL and Reasoning Team focuses on pushing the boundaries of autonomous cybersecurity by building authentic, verifiable reinforcement learning environments for world-leading foundational AI companies. As a Reinforcement Learning Engineer specializing in Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards (RLVR), you will design and scale automated verification pipelines that transform real-world software vulnerabilities into deterministic reward functions. In this role, you will bridge the gap between low-level security analysis and modern LLM reasoning models, engineering environments where AI agents learn to discover, exploit, and remediate software vulnerabilities with mathematical certainty. Instead of relying on subjective human feedback, your work directly powers the rigorous, verifiable reward signals that teach next-generation frontier AI models how to master complex cybersecurity domain logic. You will work at the intersection of fuzzing, dynamic program analysis, system exploitation, and scalable ML infrastructure to shape the safety and offensive/defensive capabilities of future artificial intelligence.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities
  • Design, build, and deploy high-throughput RLVR (Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards) environments that evaluate LLM action sequences against deterministic execution outcomes.
  • Develop automated test harnesses, sandboxes, and verification engines that convert complex vulnerability research (e.g., memory corruption, web security, logic bugs) into binary pass/fail reward signals.
  • Integrate Bugcrowd's Mayhem automated analysis platform and real-world vulnerability feeds into continuous, scalable RL environment generation pipelines.
  • Architect safe, isolated, and highly reproducible execution environments (using Docker, BuildKit, or Nix) capable of running thousands of simultaneous agent-driven exploitation and patching trajectories.
  • Collaborate directly with researchers at frontier AI labs including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cohere to define standard benchmark formats, observation spaces, and verifiable evaluation metrics for cybersecurity tasks.
  • Implement precise telemetry, ground-truth verification algorithms, and trajectory logging to analyze agent reasoning paths and prevent reward hacking or false positives.
  • Build low-level instrumentation and debugging tools to monitor memory states, process executions, and network behaviors during agent interaction cycles.
  • Optimize infrastructure performance and environment reset latency to support massive-scale parallel sampling and distributed RL training workflows.
  • Benchmark and evaluate frontier AI model performance across diverse offensive and defensive security challenges, such as automated fuzzing, exploit payload generation, and patch validation.

Education, Experience, Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
  • Understanding of RL training workflows used by modern LLM systems, specifically execution-based feedback or Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards (RLVR).
  • Proficiency developing applications in Python and low-level systems programming in C, with Rust experience being a strong plus.
  • Solid understanding of software vulnerabilities, binary exploitation, fuzzing methodologies, or program analysis.
  • Experience with DevOps pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions), reproducible builds (Docker, BuildKit, Nix), and comfort working with Linux systems and low-level debugging.
  • Experience working with or building benchmark environments (e.g., CTFs, SWE-bench, security challenges, or execution sandboxes).
Preferred Experience
  • Experience designing custom reward functions, ground-truth verifiers, or automated grading engines for AI safety and reasoning models.
  • Background in low-level program analysis tools, sanitizers (e.g., ASan/MSan), compiler instrumentation, or automated exploit generation tools.
  • Proven track record of participating in or developing competitive cybersecurity benchmarks, CTFs, or open-source AI evaluation frameworks.

Working Conditions and Physical Requirements

The ideal candidate must be able to complete all physical requirements of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.

Sitting and / or standing - Must be able to remain in a stationary position 50% of the time

Carrying and / or lifting - Must be able to carry / move laptop as needed throughout the work day.

Environment - remote, work-from-home 100% of the time.

Pay Range Disclosure

At Bugcrowd, we strive for fairness, equality and to create an environment that allows our people to perform at their very best. Our compensation philosophy is to foster a collaborative community that rewards, attracts and retains the best possible talent. The provided salary details are based on US national averages and we retain the flexibility to tailor to the needs of the business.

The national estimate for the current base range for the position of $176,400 - $242,550.

This position may also be eligible to participate in a discretionary bonus program or commission plan, subject to the rules governing the program, whereby an award, if any, depends on various factors, including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance.

Apply at: https://www.bugcrowd.com/about/careers/

About Bugcrowd

Bugcrowd is a cybersecurity company that provides a platform for crowdsourced security testing. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Bugcrowd's platform allows companies to run bug bounty programs, which incentivize ethical hackers to find and report security vulnerabilities in their systems. Bugcrowd has raised over $80 million in funding and has over 200 employees.
Learn more about Bugcrowd
Size
200 employees
Industry
Founded
2012

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at Bugcrowd

More Information Technology Jobs

Find similar Reinforcement Learning Engineer jobs: