{"id":2072360,"url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-senior-security-researcher-2","title":"Senior Security Researcher","company":{"id":18,"name":"Microsoft","domain":"microsoft.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/microsoft","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Eightfold","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":106,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"}},"role":"Security","role_family":"Security","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Redmond, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":119800,"max":234700,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":234700},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Okta","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Cyber Kill Chain","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"MITRE ATT&CK","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-02T22:12:08Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-08","last_verified_at":"2026-10-14T12:57:27Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":11,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":11},"description":"OverviewSecurity 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.\nThe Cloud Apps and Identity Research (CAIR) team researches and builds protections against advanced attacks targeting identities and cloud applications. Our work spans threat research, detection, investigation, risk, and disruption, with an increasing focus on protecting identities across third-party identity providers and SaaS applications such as Okta and Salesforce. We are expanding how we do security research through AI and agentic systems, building RAG-based and coding agents that help researchers discover coverage gaps, analyze attacks, author and validate detections, and investigate threats at scale. As a Senior Security Researcher, you will combine deep security research and threat hunting expertise with hands-on experience in AI agents, evaluation, and quality validation, helping turn emerging attack techniques into scalable protection for customers.\nMicrosoft’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.\nResponsibilities\nResearch third-party identity and SaaS attacks: Research attacker tradecraft and emerging threats targeting identities, applications, authentication flows, sessions, privileges, and data across third-party identity providers and SaaS platforms, including Okta and Salesforce.\nTranslate threat research into protection: Convert security research, incidents, customer reports, and threat-landscape intelligence into clear attack scenarios, telemetry requirements, detection opportunities, investigation logic, and durable protection strategies.\nBuild AI agents for security research: Design and develop RAG-based agents that retrieve and reason over product documentation, schemas, threat intelligence, prior research, code, telemetry, and operational knowledge to support security-research workflows.\nDevelop coding and detection-authoring agents: Build coding agents that help generate, review, refine, and maintain security analytics, KQL queries, detection logic, test cases, and related research artifacts with appropriate human oversight.\nCreate evaluation frameworks: Define representative datasets, scenarios, benchmarks, and scoring methods to evaluate agent accuracy, completeness, groundedness, robustness, and security-research usefulness.\nQualifications\nMinimum Qualifications:\nDoctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.\nOR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 4+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.\nOR equivalent experience.\nOther Requirements:\nAbility 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:\nMicrosoft Cloud Background Check:\nThis position will be required to pass the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.\nPreferred Qualifications:\nDoctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.\nOR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 6+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.\nOR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 8+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.\nOR equivalent experience.\nBackground in the modern attacker kill-chain and MITRE ATT&CK.\nExperience researching hybrid attacks involving third-party identity providers and SaaS applications, such as Okta and Salesforce, and attacks against cloud services.\nThreat hunting and data-analysis skills.\nExperience with AI agents, RAG-based systems, agent evaluation, LLM-as-a-judge techniques, and quality validation.\nProgramming skills in Python or a similar language, with experience building production-quality research or automation tools.\nExperience designing evaluation frameworks and quality-validation methods for AI systems, including measuring accuracy, groundedness, reliability, and regressions.\nSecurity 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 $160,200 - $261,000 per year.\nCertain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:\nhttps://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay\nThis position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.\nMicrosoft is an equal opportunity employer. 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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7283,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":true},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Console Games","Threat Intelligence","Gaming Consoles","Developer Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-08T07:29:36Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":53,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.592,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":11,"expected_fill_days":22,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:mid","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":234700,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-senior-security-researcher-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-senior-security-researcher-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-14T13:35:29Z","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":16688,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-15T00:00:00Z"}},"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":18},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=18"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fmicrosoft-senior-security-researcher-2"},{"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%2Fmicrosoft-senior-security-researcher-2"},{"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%2Fmicrosoft-senior-security-researcher-2"},{"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/microsoft-senior-security-researcher-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmicrosoft-senior-security-researcher-2"}]}