Principal Cybersecurity Specialist - Research & Innovation (f/m/x)

About Eye Security

Eye Security is providing cybersecurity with embedded cyber insurance solutions for organizations in Europe. Headquartered in the Netherlands, we are already over 190 FTEs and continue to grow internationally.

We combine cutting-edge technology with hands-on expertise to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber threats in real time. Our team brings together talent from intelligence, military, tech, and consulting backgrounds — all united by a shared mission: to make enterprise-grade cybersecurity accessible to every business, not just the big players.

At Eye, you’ll work on projects with an international footprint, solving real-world challenges and helping to build a safer digital future for our clients.

About this role

We are looking for a Principal Cybersecurity Specialist (f/m/x) to help shape the future of cybersecurity research, innovation, and thought leadership at Eye Security. This is a high-impact position where you will combine deep technical expertise, original research, and emerging technologies such as AI to solve complex security challenges and influence both our products and operations.

In this role, you will operate at the forefront of cybersecurity, identifying opportunities, exploring new attack and defense techniques, building prototypes, and translating research into practical outcomes that benefit our customers and teams. You will work closely with Security Operations, Product, and Engineering while also helping represent Eye Security externally through technical content, research publications, and industry engagement.

This is a unique opportunity to join a highly respected research team with significant autonomy and freedom to explore. You will have the opportunity to pursue meaningful research, experiment with new ideas, and contribute to the advancement of cybersecurity both within Eye Security and across the broader security community.

This role reports directly to the CTO and can be based in Netherlands, Germany or Belgium.

About the Research & Innovation team

The R&I team at Eye Security works on problems that sit just ahead of the MDR, Incident Response, and Threat Hunting teams. That research work includes designing agentic and LLM-assisted tooling, performing offensive and vulnerability research, or investigating threat tradecraft that is relevant when it comes to protecting our customers and the platforms they rely on.

With significant freedom to explore and build, the team investigates emerging areas of cybersecurity to help Eye Security stay ahead of evolving threats.

Much of the work we do is published on research.eye.security, and we present at conferences and industry events such as BlackHat.

What you will do

• Perform research in one or more strategic areas that align with the needs of Eye Security and our customers.

• Help drive the adoption of new ideas, tooling, and research outcomes across the organisation by clearly communicating findings, creating alignment, and collaborating with stakeholders across multiple teams.

• Represent Eye Security externally through talks, technical blog posts, media interactions, and other forms of thought leadership. You are comfortable translating complex cybersecurity topics into content that is accessible, credible, and valuable for both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Collaborate internally with departments such as Security Operations, Product, and Engineering to ensure that your work contributes in a meaningful way.

• Take research from question to working prototype to handover. You build things yourself and use modern tooling (LLMs, agent frameworks, AI coding assistants) when it gets you faster to a useful answer.

• Perform offensive security research, vulnerability research, and investigations into emerging threats, attacker tradecraft, and security-relevant technologies.

• Contribute to the development of tooling, automations, and research-driven capabilities that strengthen Eye Security’s products, operations, and services.

• Explore and evaluate how emerging technologies, such as AI tools, can be applied to improve cybersecurity outcomes and operational effectiveness.

What you will need

• Significant experience in cybersecurity and in-depth knowledge of the cybersecurity landscape and threat actors, including tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

• Demonstrable expertise in one or more cybersecurity domains (e.g., offensive security, threat research, vulnerability research, threat hunting, malware analysis, detection engineering, incident response, or related fields).

• Strong communication skills and demonstrable experience writing technical cybersecurity content, either independently or as a key contributor.

• Ability to translate complex research (e.g., APT research, newly identified TTPs, deep-dives into CVEs, AI-related security research) into clear, engaging, and technically accurate content for a broader audience, via writing, presentations, diagrams, visualisations, or other forms of technical storytelling.

• Practical experience using LLMs, AI-assisted workflows, agent frameworks, or similar technologies to accelerate research, experimentation, and problem solving.

• Experience translating research outcomes into operational improvements, automation initiatives, product capabilities, or other tangible business impact.

• Experience working in a highly autonomous environment where research priorities, experimentation, and innovation are encouraged.

• Fluency in English, written and spoken.

Nice-to-have

• Background in Incident Response, MDR, Threat Hunting, or SOC Operations.

• Demonstrable research output and contributions to the cybersecurity community.

• Proven hands-on experience with programming languages such as Python, Go, or similar, and the ability to use this skill to solve problems before distributing solutions to other people or teams through documentation, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.

• Dutch and/or German language skills.

What we offer

• A meaningful mission: protect organizations across Europe from real-world cyber threats

• Work with top-tier professionals from national CERTs, intelligence agencies, and leading tech backgrounds

• A remote-friendly culture with quarterly meetups and annual company retreats (in Spain, Portugal, Italy…)

• Weekly lunches (NL) and Thursday socials to stay connected

• A generous time-off policy, including wellbeing and volunteering days