Sr Staff Researcher (Web Security) - job 1 of 2

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

The Web Security Research team is responsible for constructing high quality detection systems and ML/AI powered pipelines to prevent successful cyberattacks and protect our customers, with a focus on malicious website and URL detection, browser security and network security solutions. 

We are looking for a motivated and creative Sr Researcher to join our team to design, develop, build, and maintain innovative threat detection systems and infrastructure for protecting customers against constantly evolving online threats and attacks. 

Your Impact

• Design, develop, test and release prevention and detection systems against modern Web attacks to protect enterprise customers around the globe 

• Research and construct new automated and ML/AI powered solutions to identify malicious indicators used by malicious websites and URLs 

• Leverage frontier technologies in ML and AI, as well as other data-driven techniques 

• Implement and maintain complex software pipelines and data infrastructure with challenging requirements for high quality and performance 

• Work closely with threat researchers and other teams to gather requirements, design architecture and write design documents

• Work closely with QA and infrastructure teams to deliver high quality products

• Improve product development and release processes

• Demonstrate good software development practices and coach the team in improving coding standards

Your Experience 

• Fullstack engineer who can learn and adapt to new programming languages and technologies to implement novel end-to-end solutions

• Creative thinker and team player with a passion for building high quality, complex systems as a part of an incredible research team

• Passion for Web Security and experience with cyber security fundamentals are required

• Basic knowledge in machine learning and experience with applying ML or implementing ML pipelines are required

• Experience with malicious URL detection and malware traffic analysis is a plus

• Experience with crawling infrastructures and security scanners is a plus

• Experience with web browser security development and browser extensions is a plus 

• Strong engineering skills and experience with designing software architecture

• Advanced programming skills in Python, JavaScript, shell scripting

• Advanced programming skills in Golang is a plus

• Knowledge and experience with modern databases and big data tools (such as ELK stack, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, etc.)

• Knowledge of cloud computing platforms, such as GCP, AWS, Azure

• Advanced experience with GCP technologies (GKE, Pub/Sub, Bigtable, BigQuery,  Dataflow, Dataproc) is a plus

• Experience with developing REST APIs and microservices

• Knowledge and experience with Docker and Kubernetes 

• Experience with unit testing and regression testing, delivering a high-quality code

• Familiar with CI/CD pipelines and source control best practices

• Familiar with application security best practices

• Strong organizational, communication and presentational skills

• Past work experience in early-stage, fast-growth startups is a plus

• Past experience on open source projects is a plus

• Must have 3+ years software engineering experience

The Team

Our engineering team is at the core of our products – 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.

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/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $126000/YR - $204500/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

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.