Ask HN: How can I get into cyber security research?

Quick background: I am a tech lead in a SRE team. I am not sure this is what I want for the rest of my life. I love the sec field. In the last few years I've played lots of CTFs, pwned several boxes on Hack the Box, studied and reproduced CVEs, etc. I have the technical knowledge. I don't think that I want to do pentests or bug bounty. I'm more into research. I like to be the one ahead discovering new stuff. But, how do I get there? Who hires someone like that? What do you need to get the role? How is this job for real? So many questions.