I see the reverse engineering skillset as not essentially different from low level systems programming, and as such it's very valuable even outside of "pure" security research.
I work as a Python programmer building scientific apps (so not security-related or systems programming at all), but at work every so often we're confronted with legacy code in binary form, or particularly nasty segfaults, etc. The thing with abstractions is that every so often the lower levels bleed through. At times like these, if you know your way around gdb, the ELF format, linking conventions, and can reason in assembly, you'll find yourself highly sought-after.
It gets even more fun when things work nicely on Linux and go haywire on Windows. Often there are no docs on Windows, so you need something who is ready to crack their knuckles, fire up IDA pro, and descend into the 7 circles of hell.
I work as a Python programmer building scientific apps (so not security-related or systems programming at all), but at work every so often we're confronted with legacy code in binary form, or particularly nasty segfaults, etc. The thing with abstractions is that every so often the lower levels bleed through. At times like these, if you know your way around gdb, the ELF format, linking conventions, and can reason in assembly, you'll find yourself highly sought-after.
It gets even more fun when things work nicely on Linux and go haywire on Windows. Often there are no docs on Windows, so you need something who is ready to crack their knuckles, fire up IDA pro, and descend into the 7 circles of hell.