Senior Penetration Tester

Booking Holdings Romania is a Center of Excellence based in Bucharest, Romania and was created to support the increasing business demands of the Booking Holdings Brands. The Center of Excellence provides access to specialized and highly skilled talent, leading industry best practices, and collaboration opportunities across all of our Brands.

As part of our Booking Holdings Romania team, you will have the opportunity to be a part of the world’s leading provider of online travel, with a mission of making it easier for everyone to experience the world through six-primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, OpenTable and Rentalcars.com.

Role description
The Senior Penetration Tester defines and leads the execution of highly technical and specialized engagements and designs new techniques of testing based on the evolution of industry best practices over time. They are both performing hands-on technical testing without requiring supervision and are coordinating teams of testers to ensure that the engagement objectives are met. They strengthen Booking’s security posture by proactively identifying vulnerabilities and security control gaps in our systems and applications. The Senior Penetration Tester provides critical input to the Senior Manager - Threat Management with the development of the security assurance strategic plan based on subject matter expertise to increase the impact and value added through this area of focus. The Senior Penetration Tester also helps further grow the security assurance area by mentoring other team members and members of other technical non-pentester communities within Booking. The Senior Penetration Tester has strong stakeholder management skills that enable effective communication of technical information to multi-level (up to CISO/CSO level), technical and non-technical audiences both within Booking and the broader Booking Holdings organization.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

Threat Modeling

2-3 years of threat modeling experience. Familiarity with threat modeling methodologies such as STRIDE or PASTA
Web application / API Penetration Testing

Proficient in scripting languages such as Python, PowerShell, Bash, and Ruby and able to create scripts that can automate the security testing process, add operational efficiency or uncover new vulnerabilities.
Create proof-of-concept exploits and scripts to demonstrate the impact of identified vulnerabilities, aiding developers in understanding the severity of security risks.
Expert level understanding of application security concepts at both technical and procedural level
Expert level understanding and exploitation skills for web application vulnerabilities (OWASP - SQLi, XSS, CSRF, XXE, IDOR, SSRF, etc )
Expertise on at least one of the following DAST tools (AppScan, BurpSuite, Acunetix, Web Inspect, etc)
Experience of creating attack trees/chains
Experience in automating penetration testing tasks such as import API spec ( Swagger, Open API, etc ) to pentesting tools
Understanding (technical aspects of) penetration testing and results (including scoping and organizing of pentests, use of vulnerability scanners, vulnerability management tools)
Secure SDLC

Ability to read code (Perl, Java, JS) and identify vulnerabilities and ability to use and modify existing code for project assignments
Good understanding of application security tooling integration with CI/CD pipelines of applications
Good understanding of how git works, good to have experience of Gitlab CI/CD
Ability to provide remediation recommendations to developers
Infrastructure and Cloud Penetration Testing

3+ years experience of performing penetration tests for infrastructure and network
Good understanding of kubernetes and virtualization technologies
Expert level understanding of vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques such as RCE, buffer overflows, subdomain takeover, dns exfiltration, privilege escalation, etc)
Hands on security experience of performing cloud security reviews for at least one of the following cloud platforms ( AWS, GCP, Azure )
Manage Penetration Testing LabExperience of creating and managing penetration testing lab/infrastructureDesirable:

7+ years of experience in information security
5+ years of relevant hands-on experience in offensive security testing and engagement management
Expertise in at least one of the following areas: (Web) application security, infrastructure and cloud security, mobile security
Excellence in communicating business risk and remediation requirements from assessments
Excellent stakeholder management skills
Competent with testing frameworks and tools
Understanding of OWASP, the MITRE ATT&CK framework and the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Software development experience
Analytical and problem-solving mindset.
Highly organized and efficient
Experience in offensive security tactics
Experience with using tools such as Burp Suite, AppScan, Acunetix , Zap ,Web Inspect, Metasploit, Nessus / Qualys and OSINT tools
One or more of the following certifications: OSCP, OSCE, GPEN, GWAPT, CEH, CISSP or a similar recognized certification in their domain of expertise


Benefits & Perks

Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned company and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
Competitive compensation and benefits package and some great added perks of working at Booking
Booking Holdings is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

Designs, develops, and maintains custom software tools, scripts, and automation frameworks to conduct security assessments, code reviews, and vulnerability analysis.
Use data analysis tools or develop custom scripts to identify patterns and trends in security assessment results, enabling data-driven decision-making for security improvements.
Defines and leads the execution of highly technical penetration tests and security assurance engagements that deliver value to Booking by independently performing hands-on, detailed technical tests without requiring supervision.
Owns the design of new technical testing engagements to best serve the current and future needs of the organization, being able to adapt industry best practices to the local technical and cultural environment.
Owns the responsibility to ensure that the budget allocated to pentesting activities performed by external vendors, delivers the necessary value and results in a good return on investment.
Actively contributes to the mid- and long-term security assurance strategic plan definition by introducing domain expertise insights and ensuring the plan is effective and impactful.
Grows the security assurance area of focus within security by understanding the current and target security posture of the business and identifying the skills and resources needed to effectively deliver on those needs.
Mentors junior and core penetration testers, driving their career growth within this highly specialized technical craft.
Provides deep technical expertise to the business in the following highly specialized domains:
Threat modeling
Web application / API penetration Testing
Mobile application penetration testing
Infrastructure and cloud penetration testing
Purple team assessments
Provides guidance and recommendations to teams, taking into account the current state of their technical environment, their future roadmap and strategy, and the risk associated with the underlying findings and vulnerabilities.
Keeps up to date with the latest developments in vulnerabilities and threats within their domain of expertise, using this to assess the security posture of Booking to new trends and attacks
Drives and coordinates multi-disciplined teams (including internal testers, external contractors, engagement managers) to conduct and successfully deliver pentest engagements of booking systems and services.
Drives the reporting of penetration test outcomes by drafting, disseminating, and presenting them to technical and non-technical stakeholders at multiple levels (junior analyst to leadership team).
Collaborates and coordinates with cross-functional technical and non-technical stakeholders within Booking.com and Booking Holdings to achieve a successful testing engagement that delivers critical security value.
Supports the cross-brand security assurance program throughout Booking Holdings by engaging with key security personnel (CISOs to engineers)
Mentors and trains non-pentesters, such as developers and other technical roles, in the relevant aspects of penetration testing and vulnerability identification to scale their impact across the department and Booking.
Plan and organize any externally and internally performed security assurance activities
Coordinate security assurance engagements executed by external testers
Execute security assurance engagement testing
Document and formally report the outcomes of the security assurance activities both to a technical and non-technical audience
Align with Booking Holdings on the overall security assurance landscape for the Group
Coordinate and support the contractual relationship and alignment with external security assurance vendors
Align business testing needs with timely and relevant threat information and verify the organization’s security posture against them
Perform other duties as assigned
Research and innovate, regularly research and learn new TTPs, and apply this knowledge to update testing methodology and tools.
Understand breach and attack simulation solutions, working with them to automate control validation and effectiveness.
Liaise with security teams to mature prevention, detection, and response capabilities
Mentor and support junior teammates
Align business testing needs with timely and relevant threat information
Define the security assurance plan, collect scope requirements, execute or facilitate the execution of the assessment and draft both technical and executive reporting
Conduct tactical assessments that require expertise in web application security, infrastructure security and / or mobile security
Develop and maintain tools and scripts used in penetration-testing processes
Support vendor testing engagements as needed
Work with teammates to consistently learn and share advanced skills and foster team excellence
Align business testing needs with timely and relevant threat information and verify the organization’s security posture against them
Mentor junior teammates
Work closely with the threat management teams to leverage intelligence sources, identify new threats in the wild, and verify the organization’s security posture against them.
Regularly research and learn new TTPs, working with teammates to assess the risk
Understand breach and attack simulation solutions, working with them to automate control validation and effectiveness.
Liaise with security teams to mature prevention, detection, and response capabilities
Perform other duties as assigned.

Benefits & Perks

Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
Competitive compensation and benefits package
Vast amounts of data to validate your ideas and the opportunity to experiment with real users


Booking Holdings is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

• Annual bonus
• Medical subscription
• Medical insurance
• Trainings
• Courses
• Certifications
• Bookster subscription
• Remote work allowance / Utilities reimbursement
• Payment / Compensation for extra hours
• Extra days off
• Flexible work schedule
• Short Fridays
• Parties / company events
• Laptop
• Mobile phone
• Parking space
• Fun / Relax Area
• Meal vouchers