2016 was a big year for our researcher community, which nearly doubled in size to provide our customers access to an even bigger pool of the best hackers in the world. We also saw a 287% increase in researcher payouts and a 66% increase in average size of payouts.
This year we launched a program to reward top-performing researchers on an annual basis. The program is aimed to show our appreciation for our researcher community, not just by rewarding our top researchers, but also by giving all researchers an opportunity to earn a bit of extra cash.
To qualify researchers must have an average submission acceptance rate of at least 80%, an average submission priority between 1.0 and 2.99, and a minimum of 10 qualifying (non-duplicate) submissions. Qualifying researchers are awarded a bonus based on their bounty rewards between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016.
And now the results…
In 2016 our top 90 researchers earned over half of our 2016 total payouts, with a rewarded submission total of nearly $2 million! Together these researchers were awarded a total of $50,000 in bonus cash.
We are very excited to announce that 2017 bonus pool will be 50% higher with a total of $75,000 up for grabs. We’ll be announcing qualifying researchers at DEFCON in July.
In addition to highlighting our top earners we wanted to call out the researchers with the most kudos in 2016. Congratulations!
You can check the leaderboard at any time by visiting bugcrowd.com/leaderboard.
We work with some of the best researchers in the world, and we love highlighting all the awesome work they do. For the latest updates follow us @Bugcrowd.
If you have any questions about how to get involved and qualify for this reward program, feel free to reach out to us at support@bugcrowd.com.
