With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft products, services and partnerships.
Microsoft's Detection and Response Team (DART) is seeking a skilled and experienced Cybersecurity Threat Hunter to join the team in Japan. DART is the first port of call for many customers during a security incident. This pivotal, customer-facing position identifies adversary activity, determines compromise scope and turns findings into clear response actions.
You will lead hypothesis-driven hunts, establish technical priorities and act as a trusted technical partner for customers during urgent response activity. Working with lead investigators, infrastructure engineers, reverse engineers and incident coordinators, you will help customers understand adversary activity, visibility gaps and durable security improvements.
As part of a globally distributed, mission-driven team, you will share research, mentor colleagues and help shape the future of Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident Response.
Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Employees are expected to demonstrate a growth mindset, innovation, collaboration, respect, integrity, accountability and inclusion.
Responsibilities
As a Cybersecurity Threat Hunter, you will lead evidence-driven hunt workstreams across customer environments, identify adversary activity and communicate clear findings, confidence and response recommendations.
Set hunt objectives, hypotheses, priorities and evidence requirements using threat intelligence, adversary tactics, techniques and procedures, and customer-specific risk context.
Develop, test and refine hunts using large-scale correlation of endpoint, cloud, identity, network and third-party telemetry.
Operate as a platform- and vendor-agnostic hunter across Windows, Linux, macOS, multi-cloud and third-party technologies, using the telemetry, forensic artefacts and security tooling required by each customer environment.
Determine adversary presence, compromise scope and visibility gaps; establish what is known, what remains uncertain and what additional collection or analysis is needed.
Author and optimise queries, automation and responsible AI-enabled workflows to improve hunt scale, analytical quality and time to detection.
Convert investigations and research into durable detections, analytics, mitigations, threat intelligence and product or architectural improvements.
Lead multiple hunt workstreams during high-impact incidents, coordinate priorities and dependencies, maintain evidentiary documentation and support post-incident and root-cause analysis.
Brief customer technical teams, executives, internal stakeholders and partners with clear findings, coverage, limitations and response options.
Provide technical guidance, share research and mentor other hunters while protecting DART information, tools and operational security.
Qualifications
Doctorate 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 experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale data analysis or security research; OR equivalent practical cybersecurity experience.
Demonstrated hands-on experience in threat hunting, Windows forensics, Linux or macOS analysis, or investigating identity-based attacks across Active Directory, Entra ID or other enterprise identity platforms.
Demonstrated experience authoring queries against large-scale security telemetry, including scripting or automation.
Ability to correlate and assess evidence from multiple sources, identify compromise scope, assess visibility gaps and clearly explain findings and uncertainty.
Strong customer-facing written and verbal communication, including executive briefings.
Flexibility to work non-standard business hours that may include evening, nighttime, weekends and/or holidays.
Business fluency in both Japanese and English.
Proven hypothesis-led threat hunting at enterprise scale, correlating endpoint, cloud, identity and network telemetry to identify adversary activity and visibility gaps.
Advanced Kusto Query Language (KQL) skills, with ability to transform data at scale.
Strong forensic capability across Windows, Linux and macOS, including analysis of endpoint artefacts and memory where required.
Platform- and vendor-agnostic security experience across Microsoft, AWS, GCP and third-party SIEM, EDR, identity, network and email technologies.
Experience leading hunt workstreams in high-pressure, customer-facing incident response while balancing the need for rapid recovery.
Experience converting hunt outcomes into durable detections, analytics, mitigations and threat intelligence.
Demonstrated technical leadership through research, stakeholder influence, process improvement and mentoring.
Relevant security certifications or equivalent practical expertise.
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 and any additional checks needed for customer or government work.
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft 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.
Skills Required
- Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or a related field; or master's degree in one of these fields with experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale data analysis, or security research; or equivalent practical cybersecurity experience.
- Hands-on experience in threat hunting, Windows forensics, Linux or macOS analysis, or investigating identity-based attacks across Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, or other enterprise identity platforms.
- Experience authoring queries against large-scale security telemetry, including scripting or automation.
- Ability to correlate evidence from multiple sources, determine compromise scope, assess visibility gaps, and explain findings and uncertainty.
- Strong customer-facing written and verbal communication, including executive briefings.
- Flexibility to work evenings, nights, weekends, and/or holidays as needed.
- Business fluency in both Japanese and English.
- Hypothesis-led threat hunting at enterprise scale across endpoint, cloud, identity, and network telemetry.
- Advanced Kusto Query Language skills and ability to transform data at scale.
- Forensic capability across Windows, Linux, and macOS, including endpoint artifact and memory analysis.
- Security experience across Microsoft, AWS, GCP, and third-party SIEM, EDR, identity, network, and email technologies.
- Experience leading hunt workstreams during high-pressure, customer-facing incident response.
- Experience converting hunt outcomes into detections, analytics, mitigations, and threat intelligence.
- Technical leadership through research, stakeholder influence, process improvement, and mentoring.
- Relevant security certifications or equivalent practical expertise.
Microsoft Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Microsoft and has not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is presented as broadly competitive overall, with clear role/level/location variation and an emphasis on using posted ranges and band information for apples-to-apples comparisons.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits are described as a standout, highlighted by a strong 401(k) match structure and immediate vesting, plus additional plan features for tax-advantaged saving.
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Parental & Family Support — Family-oriented benefits are portrayed as a meaningful strength, with substantial paid parental leave and added supports like back-up care and adoption/surrogacy assistance.
Microsoft Insights
What We Do
At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.
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