Join the elite Microsoft Defender Research team, where we turn deep security research into autonomous protection that detects, investigates, and disrupts sophisticated attacks in near real-time across endpoints, identities, cloud applications, and cloud infrastructure. Leveraging Microsoft’s global reach and one of the world’s largest security telemetry sets, you will have a direct, tangible impact on protecting organizations and the global economy. This is an opportunity for researchers who are passionate about transforming security operations and shaping how defenders investigate and stop attacks at scale.
We are looking for a Principal Security Researcher to lead research for key agents within Project Perception, part of Microsoft’s broader agentic security evolution. You will lead research for this area end to end, from framing high-impact investigation problems and bringing domain expertise into agents design and evaluation, to partnering with data science, engineering, product, and other teams to move these capabilities into production and customer-facing experiences.
Our team values diversity and strives to hire individuals with varied experiences and perspectives. We understand that no candidate possesses every desired skill and experience, but together, we form a strong, effective team.
Responsibilities
- Lead security research for agents within Project Perception, from defining high-impact problems and research methodology through agent design, rigorous evaluation, production readiness, and customer-facing experiences.
- Set the research strategy and align partner teams across the organization. Translate research priorities into clear requirements and experiments, use evidence to influence roadmap decisions, and communicate strategy, findings, and recommendations to senior stakeholders.
- Drive research outcomes into production and customer-facing experiences. Partner with engineering, data science, and product teams to define success criteria, validate quality and safety, establish production readiness, measure customer impact, and iterate based on real-world performance.
- Analyze large-scale data and conduct investigations to improve the quality and effectiveness of Project Perception agents, building on and contributing to Microsoft Defender’s protection knowledge layer.
- Apply and champion AI in security research, using current models, agentic architectures, coding agents, and tooling to accelerate triage, investigation, and detection and increase researcher productivity. Validate AI outputs and develop reusable workflows.
- Mentor and grow researchers, elevating the team’s technical bar.
Qualifications
- You have at least 10+ years of experience in security research or a closely related cybersecurity research role.
- Strong, evidence-backed adoption of AI in technical work. Regularly use and develop AI skills, coding agents, agentic tools, or AI-assisted workflows, while evaluating and validating outputs.
- Deep expertise in security research and modern attacker tradecraft, with the ability to conduct complex investigations and translate security knowledge into reliable agent and protection outcomes.
- Experience leading technical work from research and design through production delivery, partnering with engineering and product teams, and influencing roadmaps and senior stakeholders across organizational boundaries.
- Proficiency in programming, such as Python or C#, and large-scale query languages, such as KQL or SQL, with experience analyzing security data and developing or validating research and protection capabilities.
- Demonstrated technical leadership through mentoring researchers, raising the quality bar, and communicating complex findings clearly.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Security, Software Engineering, or a related field; equivalent practical experience is also valued.
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.
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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
- At least 10 years of experience in security research or a closely related cybersecurity research role
- Evidence-backed adoption and use of AI, coding agents, agentic tools, or AI-assisted technical workflows
- Deep expertise in security research and modern attacker tradecraft
- Experience leading technical work from research and design through production delivery
- Experience partnering with engineering and product teams and influencing roadmaps and senior stakeholders
- Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or C#
- Proficiency with large-scale query languages such as KQL or SQL
- Experience analyzing security data and developing or validating research and protection capabilities
- Demonstrated technical leadership through mentoring researchers and communicating complex findings
- Bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Security, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Ability to pass Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including the Microsoft Cloud Background Check
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.
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