Mr. Snowden, whose whereabouts here have remained closely held and a matter of intense speculation, will begin working on Friday at a company that the lawyer, Anatoly G. Kucherena, would not disclose. He declined to discuss details of Mr. Snowden's life in exile, he said, "because the level of threat from the U.S. government structures is still very high."

Mr. Kucherena's assertion about the employment offer could not be verified. Other claims about Mr. Snowden's secretive life here have turned out to be unsubstantiated.

In August, when Russia's migration agency granted Mr. Snowden a one-year temporary asylum, the founder of Russia's most prominent social network, VKontakte, publicly offered him a job, saying his expertise would help protect the personal data of the site's users.

A spokesman for the company, Georgy Lubushkin, declined to comment; a technology site, Digit.ru, quoted the company's technical director, Nikolai Durov, as saying he was not aware of any job offer.

Two other prominent Internet companies here, Yandex and Mail.ru, said that Mr. Snowden was not working for them.

Mr. Snowden's disclosures about the global extent of eavesdropping by United States intelligence services have caused an international uproar, deeply embarrassing the Obama administration and creating severe frictions with some of American's most important allies.