Principal Security Researcher (Wildfire)

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Job Description

Your Career

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced security researcher to join our growing security team. In this role, you will be at the forefront of our efforts to combat the ever-evolving landscape of digital threats. You will be responsible for tracking malware and threat trends, designing and building innovative detection mechanisms, and leading the development of machine learning models to protect our systems and customers. This is a hands-on role that requires a unique blend of skills in threat research, software engineering, and machine learning.

Your Impact

• Threat & Malware Analysis: Proactively track and research emerging threat actors, malware families, and attack techniques. Analyze threat data to identify trends and patterns, and translate this intelligence into actionable detection strategies.

• Innovative Detection Development: Find and develop novel methods for detecting threats across our environment. This includes static and dynamic analysis, behavioral monitoring, and heuristic-based detection.

• Full-Cycle Software Engineering: Participate in and lead the complete software development lifecycle for our security solutions. This includes gathering requirements, architecting, designing, developing, testing, deploying, and providing operational support for the tools and systems you build.

• Machine Learning Leadership: Lead end-to-end machine learning projects for threat detection. This encompasses defining the model architecture, sourcing and preparing data, building and managing training pipelines, deploying models into production, and monitoring their performance.

• Research & Publication: Disseminate research findings and contribute to the security community by publishing results in technical blogs, industry white papers, and academic papers.

Qualifications

Your Experience 

• MS/PhD degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 6+ years of experience in a research or engineering role, such as system security, threat research, malware/code analysis or vulnerability research.

• Proven experience in the complete software development lifecycle, with proficiency in one or more programming languages (e.g., Python, Go, C++).

• Demonstrated experience in leading machine learning projects, including a strong understanding of model development, data preprocessing, and deployment.

• A proven track of top tier publications in cybersecurity related areas is a big plus.

• Solid understanding of the threat landscape, including common attack vectors, malware techniques, and threat actor tactics is a plus.

Additional Information

The Team

Our engineering team is at the core of our products – connected directly to the mission of preventing cybera