Principal Security Research - Microsoft Defender ( Identity Threat Detection and Response)

Overview

Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end-to-end, simplified solutions across heterogeneous environments — and across our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on a growth mindset, inspiring excellence, and bringing our best each day to create innovations that impact billions of lives.

Come build one of Microsoft's most exciting security products: Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR). As cyber-attacks grow more sophisticated, we help enterprises detect, investigate, and autonomously protect against advanced identity-based attacks and data breaches — from nation-state actors to large-scale ransomware operators. Our research team combines deep knowledge of the attacker landscape and tradecraft to deliver the innovations needed to uncover and stop even the most well-funded adversaries.

We are seeking a Principal Security Researcher to set the technical direction for a critical area of our identity protection charter, drive multi-quarter research agendas end-to-end, and raise the bar of the team through mentorship and influence.

You will partner with engineering, PM, data science, and other research teams across Microsoft to shape strategy, and you will represent our research externally through publications, talks, and industry engagement.

We expect our Principal researchers to fluently leverage Generative AI and to actively shape how the team applies it — turning AI assistance into a durable force multiplier across investigation, detection authoring, and customer protection at Microsoft scale.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for a major area of our identity protection research charter, owning the multi-quarter strategy from threat landscape framing to shipped detection and measurable customer protection impact.
• Drive multiple concurrent end-to-end research initiatives, breaking ambiguous problems into tractable workstreams and unblocking the team on the hardest technical questions.
• Lead deep investigation and research of data across identity and adjacent sources to surface novel threats, attacker tradecraft, and detection opportunities others miss.
• Stay ahead of the evolving attacker landscape and design robust, sophisticated detection logics across the entire kill-chain — raising the bar on quality, coverage, and resilience to attacker evasion.
• Influence across organizational boundaries — partner with product management, engineering, data science, and peer research teams to shape product strategy, define new identity protection capabilities, and align roadmaps on a data-driven foundation.
• Mentor and grow other researchers (IC3–IC4), elevating the technical bar of the team through code/design review, research coaching, and apprenticeship on complex investigations.
• Shape how the team and discipline leverage Generative AI — define patterns, evaluate tools, and build durable AI-assisted workflows that scale research throughput across data triage, hypothesis generation, code and KQL authoring, and detection synthesis.
• Represent Microsoft Security externally through high-quality research publications, conference talks, blog posts, and engagement with the broader security research community.

Qualifications

• You have at least 10 years of experience in security research.
• Proficiency in developing with either C++, C#, Java or Python.
• You have experience leading a feature from design through to production delivery (design, coding, testing, deployment).
• Strong cross-group collaboration and interpersonal skills.

8+ years of experience in cybersecurity research, with a strong background in the modern attacker kill chain and MITRE ATT&CK, and deep expertise in identity-based threats and identity protection, ideally in the context of enterprise security or Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR).

Preferred Qualifications

• B.Sc. or M.Sc. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., service in an elite technology unit in the IDF).
• Demonstrated track record of leading multi-quarter research initiatives end-to-end from problem framing through execution to shipped outcomes and measurable customer impact, across organizational boundaries.
• Demonstrated technical leadership and influence beyond your immediate team, including cross-org partnerships, setting technical standards, mentoring senior peers, driving consensus on ambiguous technical decisions, and influencing without authority.
• Deep technical expertise in OS internals and forensics, including key forensic artifacts related to lateral movement and credential theft, as well as strong knowledge of identity protocols (e.g., Kerberos, NTLM, LDAP, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML) and modern cloud identity architectures such as Entra ID.
• Experience with cloud forensics and hybrid environments, including identity attack artifacts and lateral movement techniques across on-premises and cloud environments.
• Demonstrated fluency with Generative AI tools and AI-assisted workflows, including prompt design, model output validation, and building reusable AI-assisted patterns for security research, detection engineering, or threat intelligence at scale.
• Established external thought leadership in the security research community, demonstrated through research papers, conference talks, high-impact blogs, CVEs, or open-source contributions.
• Prior experience operating at Principal (IC5) or equivalent level, with a drive to tackle the hardest and most ambiguous problems in the identity threat landscape.

Additional information

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check:

• This position will be required to pass the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

#MSFTSecurity #ITDR #IdentityProtection #SecurityCopilot #GenAI #PrincipalEngineer

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.