AI Security Researcher Expert

Microsoft • Il, IL

7d

About The Position

Join Microsoft Defender Research to turn deep security research into autonomous protection that detects, investigates, and disrupts sophisticated attacks across endpoints, identities, cloud applications, and cloud infrastructure. The role contributes to Microsoft’s broader agentic security evolution and has a direct impact on protecting organizations and the global economy.

As a Principal Security Researcher, you will lead research for key agents within Project Perception. You will guide this work end to end: frame high-impact investigation problems, bring security expertise into agent design and evaluation, and partner with data science, engineering, product, and other teams to bring capabilities into production and customer-facing experiences. The team values diversity and varied experiences and perspectives.

Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements. This role requires passing the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter. The position will be open for at least five days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until filled. Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer and provides information about requesting religious or disability accommodations during the application process.

Requirements

• 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, including regular use and development of AI skills, coding agents, agentic tools, or AI-assisted workflows, with evaluation and validation of outputs.
• Deep expertise in security research and modern attacker tradecraft, including 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.
• Programming proficiency, such as Python or C#, and 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, raising the quality bar, and communicating complex findings clearly.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Security, Software Engineering, or a related field; equivalent practical experience is also valued.

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 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 Project Perception agent quality and effectiveness, 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed