Senior Researcher - Security - Microsoft Research

Overview

The Security Research Group at Microsoft Research Redmond is pushing the boundaries of data‑driven security. By leveraging the massive volume and diversity of security‑relevant events observed across Microsoft's platforms and customer environments, our mission is to detect security breaches accurately, quickly, and at an unprecedented scale.

In this role as a Senior Researcher - Security, you will work alongside leading researchers and engineers to design and build next‑generation intrusion detection systems. Our work combines security expertise with advanced data processing and modeling techniques-including large‑scale streaming analytics and graph‑based representations-to enable near‑real‑time detection of sophisticated attacks.

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At Microsoft, our mission-to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more-guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress-people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what's next for everyone.

Responsibilities

• Analyze large‑scale, heterogeneous security event logs spanning endpoints, identities, cloud services, and networks.
• Develop and train novel machine learning and statistical models for intrusion detection, anomaly detection, and adversarial behavior discovery.
• Design and prototype scalable data processing and analytics platforms capable of operating on high‑volume, high‑velocity security data, with a focus on low‑latency detection.
• Explore and apply advanced techniques such as graph‑based modeling, streaming computation, and representation learning to improve detection accuracy and timeliness.
• Collaborate closely with other researchers, product teams, and engineering partners to transition research ideas into practical systems with real‑world impact.
• Publish and present research results in top security, systems, and data management venues, and contribute to Microsoft's broader security strategy.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Doctorate in relevant field
• OR Masters Degree in relevant field AND 3+ years related research experience
• OR Bachelors Degree in relevant field AND 4+ years related research experience
• OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• A PhD (or equivalent experience) in computer science or a related field, with a research background in security, machine learning, data mining, systems, or a closely related area.
• Experience working with large‑scale data, including log analysis, streaming data, or distributed data processing systems.
• Demonstrated foundations in machine learning or statistical modeling, and interest in applying these techniques to real‑world security problems.
• The ability to independently drive research projects from problem formulation through implementation, evaluation, and dissemination.
• A collaborative mindset and interest in bridging foundational research and deployed security systems.

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, read more about requesting accommodations.