Security Researcher

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security 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.

As cyber threats continue to grow in sophistication, frequency, and impact, we are looking for a passionate and highly skilled security researcher to join our Israeli research team within Microsoft Defender. In this role, you will work at the forefront of automated attack disruption, developing capabilities that detect and respond to advanced threats in real time, regardless of the attack workflow or stage in the kill chain. You will examine diverse and complex signals across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, hunting for emerging adversary techniques, uncovering novel patterns of malicious behavior, and transforming research findings into practical, scalable protection. Your work will span from the earliest ideation stages to production-ready, customer-facing capabilities: researching and modeling attack techniques, identifying the necessary telemetry, designing robust detection logic, and ensuring that our automated disruption mechanisms can respond effectively in real-world conditions.

This is an opportunity to have a direct impact on the security of organizations worldwide by building autonomous defense systems that stay ahead of evolving threats and protect customers at scale. You will collaborate closely with engineers, threat analysts, and product teams, bringing creativity and rigor to the challenge of stopping some of the most advanced attacks in the industry before they can cause harm. Our team values diversity and strives to hire individuals with varied experiences and perspectives. We understand that no candidate possesses every desired skill and experience, but together, we form a strong, effective team. 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.

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.

Responsibilities

• Provide cybersecurity expertise as needed during security escalations and incidents to help protect Microsoft and our customers

• Proactively hunt across diverse signal sources — including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments • Stay current with the latest cyberattack trends and design robust, sophisticated detection logic across the full attacker kill-chain.

• Build and implement innovative automated disruption capabilities that autonomously detect and mitigate attacks in real time.

• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to design security sensors, validate protection ideas, and measure effectiveness using data-driven approaches.

• Contribute to the broader security community by authoring technical blogs, sharing research findings, and presenting at leading security conferences.

Qualifications

Qualifications - Required:

• Hands-on experience in cybersecurity research, preferably in endpoint or network-based threat scenarios.

• Familiarity with cloud environments (e.g., Azure, AWS) and understanding of security challenges in hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructures.

• Strong grasp of modern attacker techniques, including MITRE ATT&CK and full kill-chain methodologies. • Experience in threat hunting across diverse signal sources (on-prem, hybrid, and cloud).

• Coding proficiency in at least one of the following: C, C++, C#, Python, or Rust.

• Curious, analytical mindset with the ability to thrive in ambiguous and evolving threat landscapes.

• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with experience working in cross-functional, global teams.

Qualifications - 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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.