Senior 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. 

The Microsoft Security AI team is responsible for defending Microsoft and our customers through applied AI innovation. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Defending Microsoft’s complex environment provides a unique opportunity to build and evaluate autonomous defense and offense through emerging generative AI capabilities. Microsoft understands and learns from its own defensive and offensive expertise, including via teams like Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center and Microsoft’s Red Team, and can build a unique knowledge graph describing the relationship between risk, investigation, and response. This data, built over Microsoft’s complex digital estate, along with Microsoft AI forms the foundation for innovative solutions to defend Microsoft. 

We are looking for a Senior Security Researcher to uncover, design, and codify full-scope attack chains that span cloud services and enterprise endpoints. Real-world tactics—from identity platforms and Windows workloads to multi-cloud control planes—will be transformed into reproducible playbooks and code modules for an AI driven simulation framework. The scenarios you create will generate high-fidelity telemetry that drives blue-team analytics, autonomous investigation agents, and detection research across the company. Acting as a hands-on red-team specialist, you will automate complex campaigns at a scale, continuously expand our technique library, and collaborate with applied scientists to turn the resulting signals into defensive insights. 

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

As a Senior Security Researcher, you will:

• Discover and prototype new adversary techniques across identity platforms, Windows endpoints, and Azure/AWS/GCP services, prioritizing tactics that expose unseen detection gaps. 

• Codify each technique into reusable code modules and chain them into end-to-end attack playbooks for on-demand execution. 

• Build and maintain safe execution pipelines that run these playbooks at scale, capturing richly labeled telemetry for model training and benchmark dashboards. 

• Partner with applied scientists and detection engineers to analyze the generated logs, pinpoint blind spots, and translate findings into concrete detection logic. 

• Continuously expand, document, and version of the technique library—ensuring cross-cloud parity and endpoint coverage—while enforcing guardrails to keep simulations contained and cost-efficient. 

• Share research through internal briefs, conference talks, and tooling contributions, mentoring junior researchers and raising the bar for offensive simulation across the org. 

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science or related field. 
  • OR 5+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, modeling, cybersecurity, and/or anomaly detection. 

• 5 + years of hands-on red-team, adversary-simulation, or purple-team work, planning and running multi-stage campaigns across hybrid environments (identity, Windows endpoints, and at least one major cloud). 

• Demonstrated ability to design and codify full attack chains—turning real-world TTPs into automation or tooling (Python, PowerShell, Go, etc.) and maintaining a versioned technique library. 

• Solid knowledge of Active Directory / Entra ID abuse, cloud-control-plane attacks, and endpoint tradecraft (lateral movement, credential theft, etc). 

 
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. 

Preferred Qualifications:

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

• Proven record of shipping open-source security tooling or presenting original research at conferences such as Black Hat, DEFCON, or BSIDES. 

• Experience building or extending graph-based attack-path discovery tools (e.g., BloodHound, AzureHound) or similar relationship-analysis frameworks. 

• Experience applying large-language models or multi-agent frameworks to security automation, adversary simulation, or detection engineering. 

Security Research IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $158,400 - $258,000 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 June 29, 2025. 

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.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. 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.

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