Principal Security Researcher; Advanced Threat Prevention

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution.

From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEX Benefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Your Career

You will be part of the team that builds and delivers the threat detection capabilities powering Palo Alto Networks’ Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP). The ATP detection team is responsible for decoding network protocols, identifying applications, and detecting threats across our enterprise customers’ networks.

As a Principal Security Researcher, you will play a key leadership role in shaping detection methodologies and driving multiple projects in parallel. You will not only propose innovative ideas and deliver them into production, but also mentor and guide other researchers, ensuring the team continues to raise the bar. This is a unique opportunity to influence Palo Alto Networks’ detection strategy at scale, while making a measurable impact on protecting enterprises worldwide from advanced threats.

Your Impact

• Propose innovative detection ideas and lead the design and delivery of 2–3 major projects simultaneously.

• Mentor and guide 2–3 junior or mid-level researchers, providing both technical direction and career development support.

• Drive advanced research into vulnerabilities, Zero-Day exploits, and emerging attack vectors, and translate findings into effective IPS and ML-based detections.

• Ensure rapid response to Zero-Day vulnerabilities with IPS protections released to customers within 24 hours.

• Reverse engineering efforts to uncover new vulnerabilities and build proactive defenses.

• Define detection methodologies for complex or emerging attack vectors, ensuring scalability and robustness across products.

• Partner with product, QA, and cross-functional engineering teams to align detection strategy with product roadmap and customer needs.

• Represent the team in technical discussions internally and externally, helping shape industry direction in threat prevention.

Your Experience

• Strong leadership and communication skills with proven ability to mentor and guide other researchers.

• Deep technical expertise in exploit techniques such as buffer overflows, use-after-free, format string, XSS, SQL injection, CSRF, MITM, and DoS.

• Extensive knowledge of core network protocols including HTTP, UDP, FTP, SMTP, DNS, and SMB.

• Proficiency in analyzing network traffic using tcpdump, Wireshark, or equivalent tools.

• Experience applying AI/ML to security problems is highly desirable.

• Advanced…