Graduate Software Engineer - AI

NetSPI and Synack have announced a definitive agreement to merge, forming what they describe as the industry's leading offensive cybersecurity platform. The combined company will exceed $200 million in revenue and serve major clients including top US banks, MAMAA companies, Fortune 100 firms, and federal agencies. The merger brings together nearly 40 years of combined operating history and over 13 million hours of offensive testing experience. Both companies emphasise combining expert-led security testing with AI capabilities, arguing that human expertise remains essential for identifying vulnerabilities that lead to actual breaches. KKR will support the combined company's growth, including investment in technology development and international expansion. The transaction is expected to close in October 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals.

NetSPI and Synack to merge, forming A leading offensive cybersecurity platform. Combined company pairs elite "white hat" hackers with agentic AI to deliver security validation at scale. September 02, 2026 17:00 ET | Source: NetSPI "Our challenge to the market: put our expert + AI team against any fully autonomous platform, on a real target, anytime." MINNEAPOLIS and REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sept. 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - NetSPI(R), a global leader in modern penetration testing, and Synack, a global leader in continuous security validation, today announced a definitive agreement to merge and form the industry's leading offensive cybersecurity platform. The combination brings together two of the premier expert-led offensive security organizations and integrates agentic AI across the combined platform to deliver continuous testing and validation at enterprise scale. As the industry explores fully autonomous testing approaches, these two companies share the conviction that AI is most powerful when combined with expert judgment. By bringing together leading security talent and AI-enabled capabilities, the merger positions the combined company to deliver more sophisticated testing at greater scale. The combined company is well over $200 million in revenue and serves a blue-chip client base that includes top cloud providers, top U.S. banks, MAMAA (Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet) companies, the Fortune 100, as well as U.S. federal agencies. Together, the companies bring nearly 40 years of combined operating history and more than 13 million hours of premier, real-world offensive testing experience, providing the scale, expertise and capabilities to help organizations address increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats. "AI is transforming security testing, but it's still experts who find the vulnerabilities that lead to real breaches," said Jay Kaplan, CEO of Synack. "Bad actors are unpredictable; you need people who understand context, business logic, and attacker intent to catch them. Our challenge to the market: put our expert + AI team against any fully autonomous platform, on a real target, anytime. Autonomous tools find exploits. Experts armed with AI find the ones that actually breach you." The combined company will offer customers expanded capabilities across the full offensive security lifecycle, delivering: * One of the industry's deepest benches of vetted offensive security talent, amplified by agentic AI * Purpose-built AI that accelerates discovery, analysis, and validation of findings * Continuous security testing and validation across the full attack surface * Expanded service offerings with flexible delivery models * Greater operational scale, efficiency, and accelerated innovation. "Every conversation about this merger started with the same question: What does the customer get out of it? The answer is simple," said Aaron Shilts, CEO of NetSPI. "More coverage, deeper expertise, and faster answers from a partner they already know and trust. On day one, nothing about how customers work with us changes, but what they can access grows significantly." The combined company will continue supporting existing customers, partners, and employees throughout the integration, with a sustained focus on service continuity and long-term growth. KKR will support the combined company's growth plan, including investment in technology and product development, expansion of the combined company's offensive security talent base, and continued international growth. "Offensive security is a large and structurally growing market driven by regulatory requirements, expanding attack surfaces, and increasingly sophisticated threats amplified by AI," said Ben Pederson, Managing Director on KKR's Technology Growth team. "The combination of these two companies creates a platform with the scale, technology, and talent to serve the most demanding enterprise and government customers. Given the pace of adversary innovation, customers will be looking for a trusted partner to help maneuver the accelerating velocity of threats and breaches, and we believe there will be no other company in the market with the breadth or depth of offensive security capabilities." The transaction is expected to close in October 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Piper Sandler is serving as financial advisor and Latham & Watkins LLP is serving as legal counsel to Synack. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is serving as legal advisor to KKR and NetSPI. About NetSPI NetSPI(R) pioneered Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) and leads the industry in modern, continuous pentesting. Combining world-class security professionals with AI and automation, NetSPI delivers clarity, speed, and scale across 50+ pentest types, attack surface management, and vulnerability prioritization. The NetSPI platform streamlines workflows and accelerates remediation, enabling its experts to focus on deep-dive testing that uncovers vulnerabilities others miss. Trusted by the top 10 U.S. banks and Fortune 500 companies worldwide, NetSPI has been driving security innovation since 2001. NetSPI is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, and available on AWS Marketplace. Follow NetSPI on LinkedIn and X. About Synack Synack is the AI + human penetration testing platform for continuous security validation. Sara AI Pentesting combines agentic AI with the Synack Red Team, a rigorously vetted global community of security researchers, to expand testing coverage and prove real-world exploitability. The Synack Platform gives organizations control and visibility across testing activity, validated findings and remediation status. Synack supports point-in-time and continuous penetration testing across web applications, APIs, mobile applications, cloud and host infrastructure, internal environments and AI or LLM systems. Founded by former NSA operatives, Synack has enabled nearly 10 million hours of security testing to protect critical assets across enterprise, public-sector and highly regulated environments. Synack was named a Leader and Fast Mover in the 2025 GigaOm Radar for Penetration Testing as a Service and a Leader in both the G2 Grid Report and Enterprise Grid Report for Penetration Testing, Summer 2026. Synack also received two 2026 Global InfoSec Awards: Market Leader in AI-Powered Cybersecurity and Trailblazer in PTaaS. Learn more at synack.com and on LinkedIn. KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management as well as capital markets and insurance solutions. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and supporting growth in its portfolio companies and communities. KKR sponsors investment funds that invest in private equity, credit and real assets and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR's insurance subsidiaries offer retirement, life and reinsurance products under the management of Global Atlantic Financial Group. References to KKR's investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds and insurance subsidiaries. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR's website at www.kkr.com. For additional information about Global Atlantic Financial Group, please visit Global Atlantic Financial Group's website at www.globalatlantic.com. Media Contact Rich Gallagher [email protected] 347-229-2482

Synack to present on AI Pentesting and human validation at BrightTALK summit. Tim Nordvedt will explore how agentic AI is changing offensive security and why human validation remains critical to identifying exploitable risk. August 27, 2026 08:00 ET | Source: Synack REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Aug. 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Synack, the AI + human penetration testing platform for continuous security validation, today announced that Tim Nordvedt, Senior Manager of Synack's North America Solutions Architecture team, will present at BrightTALK's Enterprise AI Security and Governance Summit 2026 on September 1 at 10 a.m. ET, as part of the summit's AI Security Operations and Threat Intelligence track. Nordvedt's session, "The New AI-Enabled Offense Against Machine-Speed Adversaries," will examine how frontier AI models are changing the offensive security landscape by compressing the window between vulnerability and exploit. He'll walk through how that shift is putting new pressure on security teams already stretched thin, and offer a framework attendees can use to evaluate AI pentesting solutions and distinguish agentic capabilities from traditional security automation. The session builds on Synack and Omdia research showing that only 32% of the average enterprise attack surface is tested each year, leaving a 68% coverage gap. At the same time, 64% of security leaders prefer agent-led pentesting with human oversight, underscoring the need to combine AI-driven scale with human validation. Nordvedt will connect that research to the practical challenge security leaders are facing this year: As AI tools generate more findings faster, how do teams know which ones actually matter. "We're delighted to welcome Synack as a Platinum Sponsor of the Enterprise AI Security and Governance Summit, taking place virtually on September 1-2," said Stuart Wilson, Summits Team Lead at Informa TechTarget. "BrightTALK Summits are free virtual events that attract thousands of professionals seeking expert insights and original content on today's most important topics. The summit will bring together industry experts and innovators to help organizations navigate emerging AI security risks, strengthen governance and make more informed strategic decisions." "AI can find more, faster. But proving what is real, exploitable and worth fixing still requires human judgment," said Mark Kuhr, co-founder and CTO of Synack. "That's why the future of AI pentesting isn't AI versus humans. Agentic AI gives us speed and scale. Humans prove what matters." Synack's approach combines Sara AI Pentesting, powered by agentic AI, with the Synack Red Team (SRT), a community of more than 1,500 vetted security researchers. Sara autonomously discovers, reasons through and tests for vulnerabilities at machine speed, while the SRT validate real-world exploitability, identify chained attack paths and apply the creativity and judgment AI cannot yet replicate. About Synack Synack is the AI + human penetration testing platform for continuous security validation. Sara AI Pentesting combines agentic AI with the Synack Red Team, a rigorously vetted global community of security researchers, to expand testing coverage and prove real-world exploitability. The Synack Platform gives organizations control and visibility across testing activity, validated findings and remediation status. Synack supports point-in-time and continuous penetration testing across web applications, APIs, mobile applications, cloud and host infrastructure, internal environments and AI or LLM systems. Founded by former NSA operatives, Synack has enabled nearly 10 million hours of security testing to protect critical assets across enterprise, public-sector and highly regulated environments. Learn more at synack.com and on LinkedIn. Media Contact Katy Nally Senior Content Marketing Manager [email protected]