Job Details
Posted date: Aug 08, 2025
There have been 25 jobs posted with the title of Senior Security Researcher all time at Microsoft.There have been 25 Senior Security Researcher jobs posted in the last month.
Category: Security Engineering
Location: Redmond, WA
Estimated salary: $188,900
Range: $119,800 - $258,000
Employment type: Full-Time
Travel amount: 25.0%
Work location type: Up to 50% work from home
Role: Individual Contributor
Description
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 Defender Experts Team is looking for threat hunters! No matter how sophisticated attacker behaviors become, Microsoft 365 Defender will help enterprises detect, investigate, and respond to advanced attacks and data breaches on their networks. Our team uses deep knowledge of the attacker landscape and rich telemetry from our sensors to perform root-cause analysis and generate custom alerts, ensuring that Microsoft 365 Defender customers are well equipped to quickly respond to human adversaries identified in their unique environments.  Ensuring that no human adversary can operate silently begins with experts harnessing the powerful optics provided by Microsoft 365 Defender, across the attacker kill-chain, coupled with world-class detections. 
We are looking for a Senior Security Researcher to help us harness the power of Microsoft’s trillions of security signals to quickly identify and report the latest human adversary behaviors, drive critical context-rich alerts, build new tools and automations in support of hunting objectives, and drive innovations for detecting advanced attacker tradecraft.  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.
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.
Explore and correlate large data sets to uncover novel and sophisticated attack techniques, monitor and catalog changes in activity group tradecraft, and generate custom alerts for enterprise customers.  Work with customer support teams to support investigation and response during an enterprise’s time of need.Collaborate with our data science and threat research teams to develop and maintain accurate and durable cloud-based detections.Build hunting tools and automations for use in the discovery of human adversaries.Embody our culture and values
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualificationsMaster'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 experience in a technical role in the areas of Security Operations, Threat Intelligence, Cyber Incident Response, or Penetration Testing/Red Team. 3+ years experience in operating system internals and security mechanisms. 3+ years experience analyzing attacker techniques that leverage email and cloud-service tactics. 3+ years working with extremely large data sets, using tools and scripting languages such as: Excel, SQL, Python, Splunk, and PowerBI. 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 role will require access to information that is controlled for export under export control regulations, potentially under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or Export Administration Regulations, the EU Dual Use Regulation, and/or other export control regulations.  As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide either proof of their country of citizenship or proof of their U.S. permanent residency or other protected status (e.g., under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) for assessment of eligibility to access the export controlled information. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees may verify status using other documents, where applicable. 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.
Additional or preferred qualifications
Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science or related field OR 6+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, modeling, cybersecurity, and/or anomaly detection.Knowledge of operating system internals, OS security mitigations & understanding of Security challenges in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android & iOS platforms  Knowledge of kill-chain model, ATT&CK framework, and modern penetration testing techniques Excellent cross-group and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate business need for detection improvements Knowledge of major cloud and productivity platforms as well as identity systems and related security concerns  Experienced with curation of Threat Intelligence Experienced with direct customer communication in a service delivery role  Ability to use data to 'tell a story' Experience with reverse engineering, digital forensics (DFIR) or incident response, or machine learning models Experience with system administration in a large enterprise environment including Windows and Linux servers and workstations, network administration, cloud administration Experience with offensive security including tools such as Metasploit, exploit development, Open Source Intelligence Gathering (OSINT), and designing ways to breach enterprise networks  Additional advanced technical degrees or cyber security certifications such as CISSP, OSCP, CEH, or GIAC certifications 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 August 21, 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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