{"id":779479,"url":"https://alion.io/job/illumio-staff-security-ml-researcher","title":"Staff Security ML Researcher","company":{"id":4083,"name":"Illumio","domain":"illumio.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/illumio","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Sunnyvale, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":221000,"max":265000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":265000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Anomaly Detection","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"MITRE ATT&CK","optional":false},{"name":"NumPy","optional":false},{"name":"Pandas","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Scikit-learn","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"Zero Trust","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"Neo4j","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-11T21:17:35Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-11","last_verified_at":"2026-11-01T05:03:05Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":50,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":50},"description":"Onwards Together!\nIllumio is the leader in ransomware and breach containment, redefining how organizations contain cyberattacks and enable operational resilience. Powered by the Illumio AI Security Graph, our breach containment platform identifies and contains threats across hybrid multi-cloud environments - stopping the spread of attacks before they become disasters.\nRecognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave™ for Microsegmentation, Illumio enables Zero Trust, strengthening cyber resilience for the infrastructure, systems, and organizations that keep the world running.\nLocation: 4 on-site days a week in Sunnyvale, CA Headquarters.\nOur Team's Vision:\nThe Office of the CTO and Security team sets the strategic technical direction of the company while keeping both Illumio and our customers secure. Those who join us represent the leader in Zero Trust Segmentation and maintain Illumio’s competitive advantage by exploring new technologies while collaborating with Engineering and Product Management.\nWe are looking for people who leverage differences and push the pace of innovation in a time when the world faces its greatest cybersecurity threats in history.\nAbout the Role\nWe're seeking a Staff Security ML Researcher to develop machine learning-driven approaches for threat detection, risk assessment, and security analytics. In this role, you'll apply advanced statistical methods, machine learning, and graph-based analysis to identify threats, model attacker behavior, and quantify cyber risk across complex enterprise environments.\nWorking at the intersection of cybersecurity, machine learning, and product innovation, you'll partner with threat researchers, engineers, and product teams to transform large-scale security data into intelligent models, actionable insights, and customer-facing capabilities that help organizations better understand and reduce cyber risk.\nYour Impact:\nMachine Learning & Security Intelligence\nDesign, develop, and deploy machine learning models that identify anomalous behavior, detect threats, and predict security risk across complex enterprise environments.\n\nApply statistical techniques and predictive modeling to evaluate breach likelihood, attack exposure, and segmentation effectiveness.\n\nBuild behavioral profiling, anomaly detection, clustering, classification, and forecasting models using large-scale security telemetry.\n\nEvaluate model performance, reduce false positives, and continuously improve detection quality through experimentation and data-driven analysis.\n\nThreat Research & Risk Modeling\nAnalyze large-scale security datasets to identify attacker behaviors, emerging threats, and patterns aligned to frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK.\n\nDevelop threat scoring and risk assessment models that help customers prioritize remediation and security investments.\n\nLeverage graph-based analysis techniques to model attack paths, quantify lateral movement risk, and recommend mitigation strategies.\n\nWork closely with threat researchers to transform security intelligence into measurable detection and prediction capabilities.\n\nData Science & Analytics Engineering\nDesign and maintain scalable data pipelines used for model training, validation, and analytics.\n\nInvestigate new features, signals, and telemetry sources to improve detection accuracy and risk predictions.\n\nPartner with engineers to productionize models and analytics systems while ensuring scalability, reliability, and observability.\n\nConduct experiments and hypothesis-driven analysis to validate new detection approaches and security insights.\n\nProduct Collaboration & Innovation\nCollaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers to embed ML-driven security insights into customer-facing experiences.\n\nInfluence product strategy through data-backed recommendations and threat intelligence findings.\n\nHelp define security analytics frameworks, data requirements, and detection methodologies for future product capabilities.\n\nServe as a subject matter expert on the use of machine learning in cybersecurity applications.\n\nResearch & Thought Leadership\nExplore emerging techniques in machine learning, graph analytics, and AI-driven threat detection.\n\nInvestigate applications of graph neural networks, probabilistic modeling, and advanced analytics for cyber defense.\n\nContribute to patents, technical publications, conference presentations, and thought leadership initiatives.\n\nStay current on advancements in cybersecurity, machine learning, and adversary tradecraft to continuously evolve Illumio's detection capabilities.\n\nYour Toolkit:\nRequired Qualifications\n5+ years of experience in security analytics, threat research, detection engineering or data science, machine learning\n\nStrong Python programming skills, including experience with data science and machine learning frameworks such as Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.\n\nExperience designing, training, validating, and deploying machine learning or statistical models in production environments.\n\nProven ability to work with large-scale telemetry datasets from security, networking, cloud, or infrastructure environments.\n\nStrong understanding of model evaluation, feature engineering, experimentation, and handling imbalanced datasets.\n\nExperience applying analytics or machine learning techniques to cybersecurity problems such as anomaly detection, behavioral analysis, threat hunting, or risk assessment.\n\nFamiliarity with security frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and common security telemetry sources.\n\nStrong SQL and data querying skills.\n\nExcellent communication skills with experience translating technical findings into actionable business and product recommendations.\n\nPreferred Qualifications\n7-10+ years of experience spanning cybersecurity, machine learning, data science, or threat research.\n\nExperience building graph-based security analytics using Neo4j, graph databases, or graph algorithms.\n\nKnowledge of graph machine learning techniques, including graph neural networks or link prediction methods.\n\nExperience productionizing ML models in cloud environments using AWS, Kubernetes, or similar platforms.\n\nExperience developing risk-scoring systems, recommendation engines, or predictive analytics solutions.\n\nMS or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Statistics, or a related field.\n\nBonus Points:\nBackground at a cybersecurity company focused on cloud security, network security, endpoint security, or threat intelligence.\n\nExperience integrating external threat intelligence feeds and enrichment data into ML workflows.\n\nPublications, patents, open-source contributions, or conference presentations related to security or applied machine learning.\n\nIndustry certifications such as CISSP, GIAC, or advanced machine learning credentials.\n\n#LI-PO1 #LI-ONSITE\nOur Commitment\nIllumio believes that an environment of unique backgrounds, experiences, viewpoints, and individual contributions creates a culture of belonging, drives our future, and makes us stronger together in support of our customers and their success.\nAll official job offers from our company are extended directly by our recruitment team and will be sent through an official E-Signature document for your review and signature. Please be aware that we do not ask for any personal information in the process of extending offers of employment, such as financial details or social security numbers. Upon acceptance of any offer, we will request such information as part of the onboarding process prior to or on your first day of employment, and only after completing a background check through an authorized third-party vendor. If you receive any communication asking for personal details outside of these processes, please contact us immediately to verify the authenticity of the request. Your security is important to us, and we are committed to a safe and transparent hiring experience.\nFor roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Illumio will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8170,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Network Security","Cloud Security","Information Security"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-12T00:14:15Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 38 · green card filings: 4","filings_12m":38,"filings_prev_12m":35,"green_card_filings_12m":4,"median_offered_wage_usd":168929,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":22}],"liveness":{"score":79,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.882,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":50,"expected_fill_days":73,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:mid"],"computed_at":"2026-11-01T06:10:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":265000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/illumio-staff-security-ml-researcher","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/illumio-staff-security-ml-researcher.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-01T06:26:08Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":10008,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-02T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4083},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4083"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fillumio-staff-security-ml-researcher"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fillumio-staff-security-ml-researcher"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fillumio-staff-security-ml-researcher"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/illumio-staff-security-ml-researcher\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fillumio-staff-security-ml-researcher"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":779479}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"illumio.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":779479},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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