Sr. Security Research Engineer

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Proofpoint is a global leader in human- and agent-centric cybersecurity. We protect how people, data, and AI agents connect across email, cloud, and collaboration tools. Over 80 of the Fortune 100, 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations trust Proofpoint to stop threats, prevent data loss, and build resilience across their people and AI workflows. Our mission is to safeguard the digital world and empower people to work securely and confidently.

• Bold in how we dream and innovate
• Responsive to feedback, challenges and opportunities
• Accountable for results and best in class outcomes
• Visionary in future focused problem‑solving
• Exceptional in execution and impact

In today’s cyber threat landscape, protection starts with people. At Proofpoint, that simple truth fuels our passion for protecting users, the data they create, and the systems they rely on from a uniquely people‑centric perspective.

We are also passionate about finding the right people to help us in that mission. When you join Proofpoint, you are helping to build and enhance our proven security platform, blend innovation and speed in a constantly evolving cloud environment, analyze new threats and offer deep insight through data‑driven intel, and collaborate with customers to help solve their toughest security challenges.

As a Sr. Security Research Engineer on Proofpoint’s Threat Research team, you’ll be part of a highly‑collaborative, industry‑leading team focused on tracking threat actors and their associated tactics, techniques, and procedures. This role is designed to enable research and analysis activities by creating tooling to enhance or automate workflows and to facilitate tracking and data analysis processes. If desired, this role will also have the opportunity to undertake research in pursuit of the Threat Research program’s mission to find and remediate malicious activity in Proofpoint datasets.

This role has a direct impact on the efficacy of Proofpoint products, the quality of Proofpoint’s intelligence, and the protection of Proofpoint customers. Our priority is finding talented individuals who fit our mission and culture – if you believe your skills align with the requirements but feel that the ‘Senior’ title may not reflect your experience level, we still encourage you to apply.

We’re open to discussing the right fit.

• Stay abreast of a constantly evolving threat landscape and modern tech stacks needed to support research
• Work in partnership with threat researchers to design and implement tools and systems that enable tracking, contextualization, and reporting on malicious activity
• Liaison with other engineering units within Proofpoint to ensure stakeholder requirements are communicated and act as a consultant to help those units understand the needs of a security‑focused end‑user constituency
• Work effectively as part of a remote team using chat, video chat, and conference calls

• Passion for threat research and a well‑rounded understanding of the threat landscape
• Ability to understand the threat researcher’s needs, transform them into consistent & efficient system requirements, and implement them
• Experience developing tooling in Python and other programming languages; predominantly Python, with experience integrating existing tooling into comprehensive, deployable systems (Dev Ops, architecture)
• Experience working with large datasets and associated tools and libraries, such as relational databases, AWS, Splunk, Pandas, Jupyter, etc.
• Self‑directed and accountable
• Outstanding communication skills and the ability to present complex technical topics to a variety of internal stakeholders

• Understanding of malware analysis fundamentals, for example interpreting sandbox analysis results
• Experience with LLM and agent/agentic framework development and support
• Prior experience tracking threat actors and/or malware families
• Experience performing the above in a fully remote environment
• Travel 10%

• Competitive compensation
• Comprehensive benefits
• Career…