Staff Security Researcher (DNS Security)

Company 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.

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.

FLEXWORK is an employee-centric reimagining of how we work. We built FLEXWORK based on employee feedback – it is about flexibility, trust, and choice whenever possible. It’s been a journey of disruption that has yielded the best of our values. We offer as much flexibility as possible, and choices that enable you to be most productive, including benefits that meet your needs and learning opportunities that you feel passionate about.

Our Approach to Work

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work from the office three days per week, leaving two days for choice and flexibility to work where you feel most effective. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. While details may evolve, our goal is to create an environment where innovation thrives, with office-based teams coming together three days a week to collaborate and thrive, together!

Job Description

Your Career

The DNS Security Research team is responsible for delivering high quality content to our products to prevent successful cyberattacks, with a special focus on DNS security, network security, privacy protection, etc. We design, build, and maintain various detection systems and data infrastructures to protect customers against constantly evolving threats and attacks.

We expect office-based employees to be in the office four days per week, with one day working from where they choose. We believe being together facilitates casual conversations and those magic moments where we can work on issues and ideas informally. These moments build capability and deepen trusted relationships and allow our people to feel safe in taking risks and being disruptive. Like so many companies, we are working through the details and things could change …. but in general if a role is deemed office-based we want our teams to be together four days per week.

Your Impact

• Track and research emerging threats and innovate new ways to identify malicious indicators used by malware and attacks, including domains, URLs, IP addresses, sha256, email addresses, etc.
• Design and build scalable and extensible prevention/detection systems
• Leverage data-driven approaches, such as statistical analysis, machine learning, and other advanced techniques
• Convert research results and discoveries into products, research papers, etc.

Qualifications

Your Experience

• BS/MS in Computer Science or related fields with security research experience or equivalent military experience - PhD in Cyber Security or Machine Learning is a plus
• Creative thinker and team player - Have great passion and be highly self-motivated in data-driven security research
• Expertise in DNS and DNS security
• Good knowledge of machine learning techniques and algorithms, such as k-NN, Naive Bayes, SVM, Decision Trees, Logistic Regression, Deep Learning, and Boosting
• Excellent programming skills in Python, Shell script, Go, or SQL
• Understanding of core network protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, etc.)
• Knowledge and experience with modern databases and big data tools, such as MySQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, BigQuery
• Be comfortable working independently, efficiently
• Excellent communication (written and verbal) and presentation skills
• Experience with malware traffic analysis is a plus
• Experience with graph database (e.g. Neo4j, Amazon Neptune), graph-based analysis is a plus
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform is a plus
• Proven success (past publication record, open source project contributions) is a big plus

Additional Information

The Team

Our Security Services Team is responsible for building next-generation threat prevention and antivirus solutions and shipping high-quality content to our products to prevent successful cyberattacks. The areas include malware analysis, IoT security, Web security, network security, privacy protection. 

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 accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

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 $120,000/yr to $172,590/yr. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.