Principal Security Researcher

The Cloud & AI organization accelerates Microsoft's mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry are 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, inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to reach their full potential each day.

In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise services companies in the world.

Do you have a passion for helping Microsoft's clients defend themselves against targeted exploitation? Are you interested in being intimately involved in the latest cutting-edge developments in the security industry and having a direct impact on the security of all Microsoft customers? Do you want to be on the front lines of helping our customers go toe-to-toe against advanced adversaries? Are you interested in a fast-paced job full of new opportunities?

If that resonates, consider joining us as a Security Researcher on the Global Hunting, Oversight, and Strategic Triage (GHOST) team!

We are looking for an experienced Principal Security Researcher with a Digital Forensics and Incident Response background to join our team to perform threat hunts, assist with investigations, develop threat intelligence, and cultivate effective investigation practices within Microsoft tooling and products.

Researchers will support a global team in identifying and cataloging new attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and victims, as well as delivering customer notifications to protect enterprise customers worldwide and empower them to protect themselves through constantly improving Microsoft products.

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.

• Leading technical work streams during investigations and guiding others in conducting deep analyses of attacker activity across on-premises and cloud environments.
• Identifying potential threats, enabling proactive defense before an incident occurs.
• Presenting technical findings and recommendations to improve customers' cybersecurity posture and transferring threat intelligence knowledge to prepare customers to defend against today's threat landscape.
• Defining requirements for and assisting in the development of production threat-hunting tools, automations, and new capabilities.
• Driving investigation strategies, developing new hunting methodologies, and influencing security products and practices across multiple teams.
• Extensive and demonstrated professional experience in Threat Hunting, Incident Response (DFIR), Threat Intelligence, or Security Research.
• Experience investigating sophisticated cyber threats, including APT or nation-state activity.
• Extensive experience working with forensically collected data and associated tooling, security telemetry, logs, and SIEM platforms.
• Expertise in KQL or equivalent query languages (Splunk, Humio, Kibana, etc.).
• Experience with EDR and security monitoring technologies such as Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel, Crowd Strike, or similar platforms.
• Experience managing or conducting security reviews of Microsoft Azure tenants, Microsoft 365, and Entra .
• Proven ability to analyze security data to investigate attacker activity and identify indicators of compromise (IOCs), indicators of activity (IOAs), and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
• Experience and familiarity with the collection of digital forensic data, as well as case management and forensic analysis tools such as X-Ways Forensics.
• Solid written and verbal communication skills in English and the ability to work in a global team environment.
• Ability to obtain and maintain UK security clearance.

• Industry certifications in cybersecurity, DFIR, incident response, or threat hunting (e.g., CISSP, GIAC).
• Experience across multiple cybersecurity disciplines, including…