Senior Staff Researcher

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 FLEXBenefits 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

Cortex Cloud, a part of the Palo Alto Networks family, is at the forefront of protecting cloud applications. As cloud adoption rapidly expands, so do its threats. Our mission is to ensure every business can operate securely in the cloud. As a Senior Security Researcher at Cortex Cloud, you will be an integral part of our journey to identify, research, and develop security and compliance detection rules to safeguard customers from threats and misconfigurations in the cloud.

Are you passionate about using cutting-edge technology to help protect the world against cyber threats? Do you live and breathe the cyber security world? Join our dynamic team focused on research, development, release, and maintenance of risk and incident detection rules to safeguard customers from threats and misconfigurations in the cloud. Lead and perform groundbreaking cyber security research while working side by side with top-notch engineering and product management teams.

Your Impact

• Designing, developing, and maintaining detection rules to protect against attacks and ensure cloud security compliance.
• Conducting research on emerging cloud services and potential misconfigurations from a security perspective.
• Investigating cloud attack techniques, tactics, and identifying detection methods and mapping them to security frameworks and compliance standards.
• Proposing and implementing security detection rules to enhance our defense mechanisms.
• Actively contributing to ongoing process enhancements in security content development, automation, and deployment practices.
• Engaging in public outreach forums to advocate for best practices and represent our company's commitment to excellence.
• Bonus - Establishing industry thought leadership by publishing insightful blogs on security research.

Your Experience

• Ideal - 5+ years of experience in the security compliance and threat research domain.
• Must have - At least 2 years of hands-on experience in public cloud security and compliance (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Must have - Strong command-line skills and troubleshooting experience in Linux environments.
• Highly desirable - Proficiency in Python programming and knowledge of GenAI/LLM based automations.
• Highly desirable - Familiarity with Git version control, CI/CD pipelines, bug tracking tools, etc.
• Highly desirable - Experience with BigQuery, SQL, JSON, REST APIs, Terraform, and similar technologies.

The Team

You'll be working in a top-tier cybersecurity company and collaborating with some of the brightest minds in technology. Our team is at the core of our products and connected directly to the mission of preventing cyberattacks. We are constantly innovating — challenging the way we, and the industry, think about cybersecurity. Our engineers don't shy away from building products to solve problems no one has pursued before. We define the industry instead of waiting for directions. We need individuals who feel comfortable in ambiguity, excited by the prospect of a challenge, and empowered by the unknown risks facing our everyday lives that are only enabled by a secure digital environment.

Our Commitment

We're problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity's status quo. It's simple: we can't 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  [email protected].

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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.