Security Researcher

The Cloud & AI organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise service companies in the world.

Do you have a passion for helping Microsoft’s clients defend themselves against targeted exploitation?

Are you interested in being intimately involved in the latest, cutting-edge developments in the security industry and having a direct impact on the security of all Microsoft customers?

Do you want to be on the front lines of helping our customers go toe-to-toe against advanced adversaries?

Are you interested in a fast-paced job full of new opportunities?

If so, we encourage you to explore the Security Researcher role for the Global Hunting, Oversight, and Strategic Triage (GHOST) team!

We are looking for a Security Researcher with an analytical background to join our team to perform threat hunting, assist with investigations, develop threat intelligence, and to cultivate investigation best practices into Microsoft tooling and products. Researchers will support a global team to identify and catalog new attacker TTPs, victims, and deliver customer notifications to protect worldwide enterprise customers and empower customers to protect themselves via constantly improving Microsoft products.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities

This role is part of a collaborative team, assisting our customers with:

• Performing deep analysis of attacker activity in on-premises and cloud environments
• Identifying potential threats, allowing for proactive defense before an actual incident
• Providing recommendations to improve customers’ cybersecurity posture going forward and performing threat intelligence knowledge transfer to prepare customers to defend against today’s threat landscape
• Driving product and tooling improvements by conveying learnings from threat hunting and incident response at scale to engineering partner teams
• Identifying, prioritizing, and targeting complex security issues that cause negative impact to customers. Creating and driving adoption of relevant mitigations and providing proactive guidance
• Working with others to synthesize research findings into recommendations for mitigation of security issues. Sharing across teams. Driving change within team based on research findings.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science or related field
• OR 1+ year(s) experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, modeling, cyber security, and/or anomaly detection.
• OR 1+ year(s) experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, modeling, cyber security, and/or anomaly detection.

Other Requirements

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
• Citizenship & Citizenship Verification:  This position requires verification of citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science or related field
• OR 2+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, modeling, cybersecurity, and/or anomaly detection.
• OR 2+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, modeling, cybersecurity, and/or anomaly detection.

Security Research IC2 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $84,200 - $165,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $109,000 - $180,400 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 14th, 2025.

#Ghost

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.