Sr. Security Research Engineer

Senior Security Research Engineer

Proofpoint is a leading cybersecurity company protecting organizations' greatest assets and biggest risks: vulnerabilities in people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber-attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 1000, rely on Proofpoint for people-centric security and compliance solutions mitigating their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web. We are singularly devoted to helping our customers protect their greatest assets and biggest security risk: their people. That's why we're a leader in next-generation cybersecurity.

This highly technical role has a direct and real-time impact protecting Proofpoint customers. As a Senior Security Research Engineer on Proofpoint's Threat Research team, you'll be part of an amazing, collaborative, industry-leading team focused on tracking threat actors, malware, phishing, and TTPs in order to develop static and dynamic (behavioural) signatures that detect and prevent threats on a massive scale. If you enjoy keeping abreast of and analysing attacker techniques, malware and phishing campaigns, and using that knowledge to counteract those threats on a broad scale, then this is the role for you. This role has an absolute and direct impact on the efficacy of Proofpoint products, the quality of Proofpoint's intelligence, and the protection of Proofpoint customers.

Your day-to-day:

• Stay abreast of a constantly evolving threat landscape including the credential phishing landscape
• Analyse malware, malicious documents, and malicious URLs provided by internal and external sources
• Conduct in-depth analysis of email messages to detect and classify threats such as business email compromise (BEC), phishing, and other malicious campaigns.
• Apply critical thinking skills to identify the most efficient and effective way to mitigate the analysed threat
• Develop, test, and deploy appropriate static and/or behavioural signatures to mitigate the analysed threat
• Identify, prioritize, and fill coverage gaps for relevant threats to minimize customer impact
• Be on the rotation for on-call to respond customer FN/FP escalations that cannot be addressed by customer support
• Work effectively as part of a remote team using chat, video chat and conference calls
• Work with engineering teams, defining requirements, for continuous improvement of critical detection capabilities

What you bring to the team:

• A passion for threat research and a well-rounded yet deep understanding of the security threat landscape
• Demonstrable understanding of the malware and credential phishing landscape, TTPs, and experience overcoming bypass techniques
• Experience proactively identifying, responding to, and defending against malware and credential phishing threats in production environments
• Familiarity with browser internals and the Document Object Model
• Broad and demonstrable understanding of document formats commonly used for malicious purposes (e.g. OLE, CDFv2, PDF, OpenOffice, RTF)
• Experience parsing and analysing malicious documents
• Experience leveraging sandbox environments as an analysis tool
• Critical thinking: Able to develop high quality detection signatures based on analysis of malicious behaviour
• Experience creating YARA and/or ClamAV signatures used in production environments
• Regular expression wizardry
• Intermediate-level Python experience
• Interest in learning sandbox engineering concepts and contributing ideas to extend capabilities a plus
• Interest in creating synthetic malicious samples to test capabilities a plus
• Willing and able to work independently and collaboratively as part of a distributed team of industry-leading security researchers
• A hard-working, self-directed team player fully capable of working remotely

Additional Information:

• Travel: 10%
• Location: Work from home in United States
• Must be able to work during business hours local to your time-zone

Why Proofpoint?

Protecting people is at the heart of our award-winning lineup of cybersecurity solutions, and the people who work here are the key to our success. We're a customer-focused and a driven-to-win organization with leading-edge products. We are an inclusive, diverse, multinational company that believes in culture fit, but more importantly 'culture-add', and we strongly encourage people from all walks of life to apply. We believe in hiring the best and the brightest to help cultivate our culture of collaboration and appreciation.

Our culture is rooted in values that inspire belonging, empower purpose and drive success-every day, for everyone. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.

If you need accommodation during the application or interview process, please reach out to accessibility@proofpoint.com.

How to Apply:

Interested? Submit your application here.

Consistent with Proofpoint values and applicable law, we provide the following information to promote pay transparency and equity. Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several U.S. geographic markets, and we pay differently based on those defined markets as set out below.

Pay within these ranges varies and depends on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The actual offer will be based on the individual candidate. The range provided may represent a candidate range and may not reflect the full range for an individual tenured employee. This role may be eligible for variable compensation and/or equity. We offer a competitive benefits package, including flexible time off, a comprehensive well-being program with two paid Wellbeing Days and two paid Volunteer Days per year, plus a three-week Work from Anywhere option.

Base Pay Ranges:

• SF Bay Area, New York City Metro Area: Base Pay Range: 161,625.00 - 237,050.00 USD
• California (excludes SF Bay Area), Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington DC Metro, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, Washington, Virginia, and Alaska: Base Pay Range: 132,225.00 - 193,930.00 USD
• All other cities and states excluding those listed above: Base Pay Range: 120,525.00 - 176,770.00 USD

Proofpoint has been honored with six Best Places to Work Awards in 2024 by workplace culture leader Comparably, including Best Company Career Growth, Best Company Outlook, Best Global Culture, Best Engineering Teams, Best Sales Teams, and Best HR Teams.

Proofpoint is an equal opportunity employer, we hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status or disability.