Principal Security Researcher

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks were united by a shared missionto protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here everyone has a voice and every idea counts. If youre ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are youre in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption Collaboration Execution Integrity and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest we invite you to join us!

Job Summary

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 technical leadership role in shaping how ATP detects and prevents real-world attacks. You will propose and drive innovative technical ideas from concept to production own multiple projects or a broader technical area with measurable impact and provide technical leadership to other researchers or developers. This is a hands-on leadership role: you are expected to define direction make technical decisions and contribute directly to vulnerability research exploit analysis and production detection work.

Your Impact

• Shape ATP detection strategy by identifying important vulnerability exploit and attack technique areas where new or improved protections are needed.

• Drive innovative detection ideas from concept to production delivering measurable improvements in coverage quality speed or scalability.

• Improve rapid response capability for zero-days high-impact CVEs and emerging attack vectors by guiding technical assessment detection strategy and release decisions.

• Raise the quality and consistency of IPS protections by defining detection approaches validation expectations and technical review standards for complex cases.

• Expand the teams ability to deliver protections at scale through practical automation detection pipeline improvements and AI-assisted research workflows.

• Provide hands-on technical leadership to researchers or developers through direction review problem decomposition and execution guidance.

• Influence cross-functional decisions with product QA engineering and research partners to ensure detections are technically sound customer-relevant and production-ready.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience in vulnerability research exploit analysis IPS/IDS detection offensive security or closely related threat prevention work.

• Proven ability to identify important technical problems propose detection ideas drive execution and deliver measurable product or customer impact.

• Deep understanding of common vulnerability classes and exploit techniques including memory corruption injection authentication bypass path traversal SSRF RCE XSS SQL injection CSRF MITM and DoS.

• Strong ability to analyze vulnerability root cause exploitability PoC behavior network traffic protocol behavior application-layer attack patterns and detection tradeoffs.

• Experience translating vulnerability or exploit understanding into production-quality IPS signatures IDS detections network detections or other customer-facing protections.

• Strong understanding of network protocols and application-layer behavior especially HTTP DNS SMB FTP SMTP TCP/UDP TLS and related protocols.

• Strong programming or scripting skills for research automation tooling test generation detection development or pipeline improvements.

• Ability to lead complex technical work under ambiguity guide other researchers or developers and make sound technical decisions under time pressure.

• Experience using AI ML automation or research tooling to improve security analysis detection development validation or response workflows is highly desirable.

• Foundational understanding of AI security scenarios or AI-assisted security workflows is a plus.

• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical direction across research product QA and engineering partners.

• BS/MS in Computer Science Computer Engineering Cybersecurity or related field or equivalent professional experience.

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications experience and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary commission target (for sales/com-missioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

Our Commitment

Were trailblazers that dream big take risks and challenge cybersecuritys status quo. Its simple: we cant accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need please contact us at .

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age ancestry color family or medical care leave gender identity or expression genetic information marital status medical condition national origin physical or mental disability political affiliation protected veteran status race religion sex (including pregnancy) sexual orientation or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.