A local startup focused on aerospace cybersecurity is ready to hire technicians to staff its first out-of-state lab.
Albuquerque-based Proof Labs, which conducts cyber vulnerability assessments for organizations, recently announced plans for a new Cybersecurity Vulnerability Lab in Colorado Springs. The lab is part of Space ISAC, a national information sharing organization that Proof Labs became a member of this past summer.
Now, Proof Labs wants to hire two to three senior engineers or technicians to lead that lab's work. Dick Wilkinson, the company's chief technology officer and co-founder, discussed the positions in a recent LinkedIn post. According to the post, candidates should be located in or near Colorado Springs, with work planned to start in March or April 2023.
Wilkinson's post states that interested candidates not located in or near Colorado Springs can still reach out for work that's planned at new lab locations in the coming years. Although all locations aren't finalized yet, one lab could be located in Albuquerque, where the startup has its headquarters.
"We are trying to get them to be our Space Force assessors," Wilkinson said to Albuquerque Business First in a Dec. 20 interview about the new lab technicians. "Meaning that the company holds the credentials and you're the subject matter expert to do the work.
"They will be the person that goes into the lab," he continued. "I'll be there to supervise them, but they're the engineer that's going to take the actual device and start to manipulate it, start to try and attack it and start to try and make sure that what it does matches the [cybersecurity] regulations. It's electronic engineering and cybersecurity skills mixed together to do that hands-on hardware work."
This work at the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Lab would be a key part of Proof Labs' efforts to finalize a cybersecurity assessment license with the U.S. Space Force. If its application is accepted, the license would give Proof Labs the credentials necessary to validate the cybersecurity of hardware components from companies looking to land Space Force contracts.
"Once we get that, we're pretty much guaranteed that the work is going to come to us," said Ricardo Aguilar, Proof Labs' CEO and co-founder. "And our business is really going to take off from that point."
Wilkinson's LinkedIn post states that the company is looking to establish individual contractor agreements, which could lead to full-time hires. He said the company is currently gauging candidate interest and doesn't have official job postings yet.
Aguilar said that these employees, when hired, would receive competitive mid- to high-level salaries for engineers and lab technicians.
