Staff Writer (Satire), the Exploit

Summary of the Role

the Exploit (theexploit.co) is the security and tech industry's most trusted source of news that didn't happen. It's a satirical publication from Maze, an AI-native security company, covering the breaches, vendor launches, board meetings, AI news and compliance audits that are hilarious and totally made up, even when they don't feel like it.

We're hiring two satire content creators who can write a story and then turn it into a video. Each story runs as an article on the Exploit, then becomes a short social video, usually a 30- to 90-second news segment.

If you can shoot and edit the video yourself, that's a big plus. If you can't, your scripts need to be good enough that we'll happily make them for you. We'll take a great writer with no camera over a great camera with nothing to say.

Two formats we like: Matt Johansen's security news recaps, where one person covers one story fast with some comedy in it, and Ev Hand, who covers sports news in the article style we're after.

Some of our top articles, so you can see what works:

1. French Locksmith Named Claude Launches Line of Padlocks; Cybersecurity Stocks Lose $18 Billion

2. Judge Sentences CISO to 8 Consecutive Hours on RSA Expo Floor

3. Meta Labs Proudly Announces Its AI Has Also Committed a Felony

4. Burnt-Out CISO Forced to Decline Michelin-Starred Round Table Dinner

5. Riot Breaks Out at Corporate Headquarters After Security Team Introduces Shift Left

Your Contributions to Our Journey

Writing

• Pitch and write 400- to 700-word articles in the deadpan voice of a real newsroom covering an unreal industry

• Pitch a lot of headlines and work them through with our team. The pieces are yours; we're there to keep the quality high.

Video

• Write, and ideally shoot and edit, short news-desk videos

• Turn our best articles into video, and pitch video-first stories of your own

Ideas

• Test new formats, characters and recurring bits instead of repeating whatever worked last week

• Bring material from your day job, with names changed to protect the guilty

What You Need to Be Successful

• Real practitioner experience. You've worked in cybersecurity (SOC, IR, red team, GRC, security engineering or similar), AppSec or product security, cloud security, or software engineering.

• Not a marketer. This role isn't for content or marketing people. If your LinkedIn headline includes the word "storyteller", we respect you, and this isn't the role. Marketers haven't lived the life (neither has the person writing this JD), and the jokes only work if they're real.

• Funny on the page and on camera, not "has a good personality" funny.

• Tight writing. You know what works and what to cut. Your grammar can be sub-par; that's the easiest thing to fix.

• Never punches down. We laugh with the burnt-out CISO, not at them. Vendors are fair game, and that includes Maze: we run the Exploit and we make fun of ourselves too.

• Reliable. You ship 5 articles and 5 videos a month without anyone chasing you, and you cut the weak ones yourself.

• Comfortable being named publicly. Your byline goes on every article, and your name, image, voice and likeness appear in the videos we publish and promote, including paid ads. Anonymous accounts and pen names won't work for this role. We know some employers have concerns about this, so you can do the work after hours.

• Nice to Haves

  • You can shoot and edit your own short-form video

  • You've written sketch, standup, satire, or a security newsletter people actually read

  • You already post on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or LinkedIn

How to Apply

• 10 headlines. Your own, about security, AI or software, as they'd appear on the Exploit. We read all 10.

• Video examples. Two or three short videos you've made, on any topic. If you haven't made videos before, record yourself telling one of the stories above in 30 seconds.

• One sentence on your background. Your role, where you did it, and the worst thing you've seen in production.

Why Join Us

• Get paid to roast your industry, its vendors and more. The material you've been collecting at work finally has somewhere to go.

• Upside when a piece lands. We pay like a creator program, not a newsroom, so your best work earns more.

• A small team. We're starting with two or three people, not forty, so you get real feedback and a direct line to the team.

• Keep your day job. The role is remote and flexible, and we'd honestly prefer you keep it, since that's where the material comes from.

Compensation

$600 a month base for 5 articles and 5 videos. Any extra content or videos requested by Maze staff beyond the base are agreed project by project.

When one of your pieces performs organically, we often put ad money behind it. If we do, you earn 3% of the spend on top of your base for as long as the ads run. For example, if we spend $5,000 USD on ads, you make $150 more.

This is a contractor role with Maze, not the Exploit.