Reverse engineering career

Hi TE.

I have a few queries that I think the board may be able to help with, so I will just jump right in to my questions.

I'm trying to find out as much as I can about the area of reverse engineering (as the title says :P). Any and all information would be helpful. I have found a good book on Amazon, but the actual job side seems to be lacking in information. I'm really wanting to know the types of employers that may be interested in this skill set, the salary ranges for both employed and freelance positions and training required etc?

Thank you for any help.

JB

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

tiersten

You've not said reverse engineering what exactly. Hardware and software are two completely different fields.

I don't think you're quite understanding what the job entails though. You don't just get trained to do reverse engineering of products by itself. You have to have a deep understanding of software or hardware so that generally means you've got the skills necessary to design and make that item in the first place. This means learn how to be a very good programmer with experience in low level hardware access and assembler or to be very good at electrical or electronic engineering.

Other non trained skills would be a meticulous standard of documentation and have the ability to have a flawless audit trail. Depending on what you're doing, you can't be "tainted" in any fashion by reading priviledged information or documentation. Reverse engineering to do a clean room implementation will mean reams and reams of documentation and multiple teams working on it.

Companies that would have these types of jobs would be companies that has a R&D department.

johnbom00

Hi tiersten.

I'm sorry if I didn't make sense. I don't have a great grasp on what actually is involved (although I did make the distinction between H&S).

To be more specific then -

Reverse engineering hardware - What would be the salaries for this type of career (either as an employee/freelance?)

Reverse engineering software - What would be the salaries for this type of career (either as an employee/freelance?)

I'm not solely interested in the money, but I do have an anecdote that I can tell about how this question originated if anyone is interested.

tiersten

johnbom00 wrote: »

I don't have a great grasp on what actually is involved (although I did make the distinction between H&S).

Are you looking into this as a possible job or just curious? If you're looking into it for possible employment then start looking at programming or development jobs and the requirements for that.

johnbom00 wrote: »

Reverse engineering hardware - What would be the salaries for this type of career (either as an employee/freelance?)

Reverse engineering software - What would be the salaries for this type of career (either as an employee/freelance?)

You're asking long is a piece of string. You could be paid nothing to paid a 6 digit salary as it all depends on what you're doing, how much experience you have and who you're working for. I'd be surprised if there are many freelance jobs for this particular field.