Security Research Engineer - Project Perception

Overview

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end-to-end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft's mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers' environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.

Our team turns real vulnerabilities and adversary behavior into reproducible tasks that models and agents can learn from and be evaluated against. Reliable grading and reward signals are central to this work: success must reflect a verified security outcome, not simply a convincing response.

We are looking for several Principal and Senior Security Research Engineers to build realistic, safely contained attack scenarios across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. You will combine hands-on security research with software engineering to reproduce vulnerable conditions, construct representative multi-step attack chains, and implement checks that establish what actually happened. Your scenarios will support reinforcement learning for Microsoft’s MAI family of models and evaluation of security Perception agents and the software harnesses that run them. Working with threat researchers, AI engineers, and environment engineers, you will test whether systems can distinguish threats from benign activity, connect evidence across an attack chain, and identify effective responses. You will own scenarios from research through implementation and grading, adapting them as attacker techniques evolve. Your work will give teams trustworthy training signals and concrete evidence of whether model, agent, or harness changes improve security capabilities that matter to customers.

Candidates residing within commuting distance of the Redmond or Reston hub are required to work on-site under a hybrid work arrangement, in accordance with Microsoft’s and the team’s in-office requirements for these designated locations.

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* Turn threat research into working scenarios, reproducing real vulnerabilities and emerging adversary techniques in cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.

• Build realistic attack chains.
• Connect vulnerable applications, identity weaknesses, and misconfigurations into multi-step scenarios with verified prerequisites and observable security impact.
• Make outcomes verifiable.
• Build automated graders and reward signals grounded in system state and telemetry, distinguishing agent success, effective defenses, and environment failures.
• Evaluate beyond familiar patterns.
• Create attack variants, benign lookalikes, and patched controls that expose missed threats, false positives, and memorization.
• Deliver safe, reusable research.
• Own scenario code, isolation, evidence capture and reset; partner with AI and environment engineers to turn findings into better training and evaluation. Qualifications Minimum Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.
• + OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 4+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection. + OR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 6+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection. + OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements:

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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 5+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.
• + OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 8+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection. + OR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 12+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection. + OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of experience researching vulnerabilities, conducting authorized offensive security tests, investigating security incidents, or developing security tools.
• 3+ years of experience developing and debugging security tools or scenario automation in Python, C#, Go, C/C++, or TypeScript, using version control and automated tests.
• Experience independently reproducing a vulnerability or adversary technique and documenting its prerequisites, reproduction steps, and observed security impact.
• Experience building or validating multi-step attack chains across applications, identities, or hosts, including the access requirements and evidence for each step.
• Experience assessing cloud IAM in Azure, AWS, or GCP and testing authentication, permissions, or network access in Windows or Linux environments.
• Experience confirming or rejecting security findings through source-code review, telemetry, or controlled tests, including checking whether existing safeguards prevent the claimed impact.
• Experience running authorized security tests with isolated targets, lab-only credentials, execution limits, and cleanup procedures.
• Reconstructed attacks from incident evidence or threat reports for red-team, purple-team, or adversary-emulation exercises.
• Reproduced attack paths across cloud and on-premises identity systems involving federation, service principals, workload identities, or directory services.
• Used source-code analysis, debugging, or reverse engineering to identify a vulnerability's root cause and verify a fix.
• Built automated graders or reward functions that check system state and telemetry, including checks that distinguish scenario failures from agent failures.
• Created attack variants, benign comparison cases, patched scenarios, or simulated user activity to test detection accuracy and false positives.

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Security Research IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $160,200 - $261,000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Security Research IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process.