Staff Security Researcher (Xpanse)

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.

We have the vision of a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. These aren't easy goals to accomplish - but we're not here for easy. We're here for better. 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.

We're changing the nature of work. Palo Alto Networks is evolving to meet the needs of our employees now and in the future through FLEXWORK, our approach to how we work. From benefits to learning, location to leadership, we've rethought and recreated every aspect of the employee experience at Palo Alto Networks. And because it FLEXes around each individual employee based on their individual choices, employees are empowered to push boundaries and help us all evolve, together.

Our Approach to Work

Our Team Culture

Cortex Xpanse's Security Research Engineering team is a team of researchers with varied backgrounds and strengths - we've previously worked as Threat Intelligence Analysts, Software Engineers, Vulnerability Engineers, and Malware Analysts. We are united by our passion for vulnerability research and our commitment to an inclusive, low-ego team culture.

Our team is driven by:

• Thoroughness balanced by an inclination for action: We have high standards for the research we publish, but we also aim to push to production as quickly as possible.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills: We believe good research doesn't happen in isolation. Our team is very people-oriented, and we invest time in building positive relationships with each other and our collaborators.
• Psychological safety: We treat the team's culture as the air we breathe. Outcomes are not the only measure of success; how we get our work done is just as important. We believe people bring their best when they feel understood, supported, and safe to speak up, and we've created a framework for giving feedback and translating it into cultural changes.

Flexibility: We expect everyone to maintain a set of core hours every day when they're available to the team, but otherwise, your schedule is yours to decide. Whether you prefer to do research at night and run it by the team in the morning or you have school pick-up/drop-off during the day, we want everyone to have work-life balance and feel set up for success.

Your Career

We're looking for a Staff Security Researcher for Cortex Xpanse's Security Research Engineering team. You will be responsible for the creation, validation and deployment of vulnerability signatures and protocol payloads which will be used by our scanning infrastructure to understand what vulnerabilities are exposed across customer networks. You will also be responsible for creating new policies, which encode risky device configurations as code that is run over observations from our global scanning data. You will be a key member of a team that proactively sources vulnerabilities and misconfigurations from newly discovered CVEs and responds to Xpanse customer requests.

Our mission is to find risks online and protect the world's largest organizations from malicious software and hackers. Expanse's Internet intelligence platform collects petabytes of Internet data, leverages artificial intelligence to discover "unknown unknown" risks for customers, and delivers those insights via a SaaS web application. On this team, you will directly contribute to our mission by defining and delivering on Expanse's technical roadmap.

Your Impact

• Contribute to Xpanse's critical vulnerability response by implementing the necessary vulnerability signatures and payloads to detect presence of critical CVEs while effectively communicating with the Xpanse team, across the Cortex business unit, and across Palo Alto Networks
• Research trending threats and develop proof of concepts to detect presence of confirmed and inferred vulnerabilities
• Research and develop fingerprints that can help Xpanse identify and structure more and more types of services running on the global Internet
• Proactively add customer-requested policies and implement protocol payloads while minimizing false positives & false negatives
• Research emerging vulnerability threats on the global Internet and contribute to Cortex Research blogs/publications

Your Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or other technical discipline (or equivalent professional or military experience). We don't look for a specific number of years of experience, but typically people who are successful at Staff level positions are early to mid-level in their careers.
• High level knowledge of network security vulnerabilities, CVSS scoring and exploit techniques
• Familiarity with one or more programming languages (Java, Python, Go, Bash)
• Ability to concisely communicate complex subject matter to technical and non-technical audiences
• Ability to work independently as a researcher as well as part of larger cross-functional teams

Nice to have, but not required:

• Experience with SQL and Regex
• Prior experience performing open-ended security research and showcasing externally via blogs and publications
• Hands-on experience in security research/systems security/network security

The Team

Cortex Xpanse helps protect some of the world's most important organizations by finding risks on the Internet that no one else can find. Our security research teams are at the core of our products and are responsible for building security detections for our products that allow customers to turn trillions of Internet data points into critical cybersecurity insights. 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 trailblazers that dream big, 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

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.

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/commissioned roles) is expected to be between 144200 - $233200/yr. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here .

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

Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description. The position description has been reviewed for accuracy and Dice believes it to correctly reflect the job opportunity.