PART 5: CAREER PATHS IN OFFENSIVE SECURITY
The Opportunity Landscape
Offensive security skills - especially tool development - open numerous career paths:
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CAREER PATHS FOR OFFENSIVE TOOLING DEVELOPERS │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ 1. PENETRATION TESTER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Salary Range: $70,000 - $150,000 │
│ • Conduct authorized vulnerability assessments │
│ • Exploit vulnerabilities, write reports │
│ • Custom tools give you edge over peers │
│ Companies: Big 4 consulting, boutique security firms │
│ │
│ 2. RED TEAM OPERATOR │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Salary Range: $100,000 - $180,000 │
│ • Simulate advanced adversaries │
│ • Long-term engagements, stealth operations │
│ • Custom tool development essential │
│ Companies: Large enterprises, financial services │
│ │
│ 3. SECURITY RESEARCHER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Salary Range: $90,000 - $200,000+ │
│ • Find novel vulnerabilities and techniques │
│ • Develop proof-of-concept exploits │
│ • Publish research, present at conferences │
│ Companies: Security vendors, Google Project Zero │
│ │
│ 4. OFFENSIVE SECURITY TOOL DEVELOPER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Salary Range: $120,000 - $220,000 │
│ • Build commercial or internal offensive tooling │
│ • Maintain C2 frameworks, exploit engines │
│ • Design evasion techniques │
│ Companies: Forta, Outflank etc │
│ │
│ 5. INDEPENDENT SECURITY CONSULTANT │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Income: $150 - $500/hour ($150,000 - $500,000/year) │
│ • Provide specialized offensive services │
│ • Custom tool development for specific clients │
│ • Flexibility, direct client relationships │
│ Requires: Reputation, network, business skills │
│ │
│ 6. BUG BOUNTY HUNTER / VULNERABILITY RESEARCHER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Income: Highly variable ($0 - $1M+) │
│ • Find vulnerabilities in products/services │
│ • Submit to bug bounty programs (HackerOne, Bugcrowd) │
│ • Custom tools for vulnerability discovery │
│ Top hunters: $500K+ annually │
│ │
│ 7. PURPLE TEAM / DETECTION ENGINEERING │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Salary Range: $110,000 - $190,000 │
│ • Bridge offense and defense │
│ • Build detection rules based on attack techniques │
│ • Validate defensive controls │
│ • Tool development for testing detections │
│ Companies: Mature security programs │
│ │
│ 8. MALWARE ANALYST / REVERSE ENGINEER │
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│ Salary Range: $95,000 - $180,000 │
│ • Analyze real-world malware and APT tools │
│ • Understand offensive techniques through RE │
│ • Develop analysis tools and automation │
│ Companies: Antivirus vendors, threat intelligence │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Skill Differentiation
What makes tooling developers particularly valuable:
Standard Pentester/Red Teamer:
- Uses existing tools (Metasploit, Cobalt Strike, Burp)
- Follows established methodologies
- Good at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities
- Valuable, but increasingly common skill set
Tooling Developer:
- Builds custom capabilities
- Creates new attack techniques
- Bypasses modern defenses
- Understands implementation details deeply
- Rare, highly valued skill set
Market Reality (2025):
DEMAND FOR OFFENSIVE SECURITY SKILLS:
• High demand across industries
• Remote work widely available
• Continuous skills shortage
BUT:
Market saturated with: Entry-level pentesters using Kali Linux
Market desperate for: Developers who can build custom tooling
Tooling development skills = 30-50% salary premium
Building Your Career
Career Progression Path:
YEAR 0-2: FOUNDATION
├─ Learn programming (Python, Go, C/C++)
├─ Study Windows/Linux internals
├─ Get OSCP or similar certification
├─ Contribute to open-source tools
└─ Build portfolio of custom tools
YEAR 2-5: SPECIALIZATION
├─ Develop expertise in specific area (malware dev, C2, web exploits)
├─ Present at local conferences/meetups
├─ Publish blog posts and tools
├─ Take advanced courses (like this one!)
└─ Network with security community
YEAR 5-10: EXPERTISE
├─ Recognized name in specific domain
├─ Conference speaker (Black Hat, DEF CON)
├─ Published security research
├─ Contribute to major open-source projects
└─ Consulting or leadership roles
YEAR 10+: MASTERY
├─ Industry thought leader
├─ Novel technique discovery
├─ Build/lead security teams
├─ Start security company or product
└─ High-value independent consulting
Portfolio Development:
Build a GitHub portfolio demonstrating your skills:
GOOD PORTFOLIO PROJECTS:
✓ Custom shellcode loaders with evasion techniques
✓ Unique C2 protocol implementation
✓ Novel process injection technique
✓ Security tool that solves real problem
✓ Well-documented, clean code
AVOID:
✗ Copying existing tools with minor changes
✗ Malware with no legitimate use case
✗ Poorly documented, messy code
✗ Tools that only work in specific, outdated environments
Certifications That Matter:
| Certification | Value for Tool Developers | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| OSCP | High (entry) | Industry standard, hands-on |
| OSEP | Very High | Evasion-focused, relevant to course |
| OSCE³ | High | Advanced exploitation |
| GXPN | High | Pentesting, some tool development |
| CRTO | Very High | Red team ops, modern techniques |
| CEH | Low | Too basic, not hands-on enough |
This course positions you for OSEP-level work and beyond.