Security Research Intern

Illumio • Sunnyvale, CA

5d • $37 - $37 • Onsite

About The Position

Illumio is hiring a Security Research Intern for a 12-week internship beginning May 24, 2027, or June 21, 2027. The position is part of the Threat Research team within the Office of the CTO and Security, which studies emerging threats, adversary behaviors, and evolving technologies and works with Engineering and Product Management to strengthen security capabilities and customer outcomes. The intern will work with experienced threat researchers to investigate real-world cyber threats, analyze attacker behavior and infrastructure, and explore how research can inform security insights and detection capabilities. The role is a hands-on opportunity at the intersection of threat research, threat intelligence, security telemetry, and data analysis, with opportunities to explore AI and machine learning where relevant. The position is based at Illumio’s Sunnyvale, California headquarters and requires four on-site days per week.

The intern will build practical experience in security research, threat intelligence, adversary analysis, network security, security telemetry, and threat detection. They will investigate real security problems and learn how research, telemetry, and machine learning can contribute to identifying malicious behavior and improving detection capabilities. Interns will present their research, experiments, and key learnings at the end of the program.

Requirements

• Currently enrolled in a full-time Bachelor’s or Master’s degree program in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Data Science, or a related technical field, with an expected graduation date in Winter 2027 or Spring 2028.
• Strong interest in cybersecurity, security research, threat intelligence, or machine learning.
• Exposure to threat intelligence concepts such as IOCs, attacker campaigns, malware, vulnerabilities, or MITRE ATT&CK.
• Basic understanding of networking concepts and protocols such as TCP/IP, DNS, and HTTP/HTTPS.
• Familiarity with Python, SQL/KQL, notebooks, or similar programming and data-analysis tools, and an interest in analyzing security and network telemetry.
• Ability to research technical topics and clearly communicate findings.
• Curiosity about how attackers operate and how their behaviors can be detected.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working with network or security telemetry, logs, or large datasets.
• Familiarity with Python data-analysis tools such as pandas or NumPy.
• Basic understanding of machine-learning or statistical techniques such as classification, clustering, or anomaly detection.
• Experience experimenting with machine-learning libraries such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, or similar frameworks.
• Interest in applying machine learning to cybersecurity problems such as behavioral analysis or threat detection.
• Participation in CTFs, security competitions, academic research, open-source projects, or personal security projects.

Responsibilities

• Research emerging threats, vulnerabilities, attacker campaigns, and evolving adversary techniques.
• Analyze threat intelligence, including malicious IP addresses, domains, attacker infrastructure, and adversary behaviors.
• Investigate network activity associated with command-and-control, suspicious communications, and other potentially malicious behavior.
• Analyze security and network telemetry to identify patterns that may distinguish normal from suspicious activity.
• Explore machine-learning and statistical techniques for security use cases such as anomaly detection, behavioral analysis, clustering, and classification.
• Experiment with machine-learning models and detection approaches, evaluating their effectiveness, limitations, and potential false positives.
• Help build and curate structured datasets connecting threats, campaigns, indicators, vulnerabilities, and attacker techniques.
• Explore how threat intelligence and security telemetry can be combined to develop new detection ideas.
• Collaborate with threat researchers, data scientists, engineers, and product teams to communicate findings and potential security improvements.
• Present research, experiments, and key learnings at the end of the internship.

Benefits

• Practical experience in security research, threat intelligence, and adversary analysis.
• Deeper understanding of network security, security telemetry, and threat detection.
• Experience investigating emerging threats and translating research into detection and product ideas.
• Exposure to emerging approaches, including machine learning and data-driven security techniques, where relevant.
• Opportunity to work alongside experienced threat researchers and learn how security research operates in a real-world cybersecurity organization.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Intern