Director of Security Research

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.

Our Approach to Work

We lead with flexibility and choice in all of our people programs. We have disrupted the traditional view that all employees have the same needs and wants. We offer personalization and offer our employees the opportunity to choose what works best for them as often as possible - from your wellbeing support to your growth and development, and beyond!

Job Description

Your Career

As the Director of Research, you will spearhead the globally renowned cloud security research of Prisma Cloud, the most comprehensive and advanced Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP). You will lead multiple teams of exceptional researchers, focusing on various research areas such as:

• Cloud workload protection
• Cloud IAM security
• Application security
• Vulnerability management
• Public cloud security posture

Your group will be accountable for researching new and existing security threats and countermeasures in cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, including public cloud infrastructure, Containers, Kubernetes, Serverless, and more.

The team's work encompasses the discovery of zero-days, misconfigurations, and the analysis of security issues in a range of projects, from OS level to cloud-native applications. This also includes threat hunting for cloud and research centered on Web and API security. As part of our daily research activities, we engage in data science, AI, machine learning algorithms, and have access to data from thousands of customers worldwide.

You will ensure that research outcomes directly impact the Prisma Cloud platform and develop innovative solutions based on research findings to protect our customers. You will regularly interact with customers to support all stages of customer relationships, including presenting our research to promote sales, expansions, and retention.

You will be responsible for defining a long-term research strategy with intentional research goals and ensuring they are met. You will oversee the evaluation and improvement of security researchers and their managers, as well as the recruitment and training of new researchers across multiple regions in North America and EMEA.

In your key role, you will collaborate with other research teams at Palo Alto Networks, such as Unit 42, and other teams to foster knowledge sharing and collaboration in producing cutting-edge research and enhancing Prisma and Palo Alto Networks products. You will be responsible for managing all steps of responsible disclosure procedures facing third-party vendors, including CVE assignment, and for the publication of high-quality research articles and presentations.

To successfully achieve your goals, you will regularly provide executive briefings to internal leadership and customer stakeholders.

Your Impact

• Build and operationalize a long term security research strategy for Prisma Cloud
• Oversee the work of multiple team managers and researchers - Ensure consistent high-quality research outputs
• Lead team efforts to present research in major industry conferences including Black Hat, DEF CON, and RSA
• Lead team efforts to publish Unit 42 articles and whitepapers
• Collaborate regularly with multiple teams in the company, including Engineering, PM, Marketing, PMM, Sales and others to successfully deliver and utilize research outputs to boost sales and improve Palo Alto Network products
• Innovate and patent new protections and techniques to prevent attacks on cloud workloads
• Ensure the Prisma product has accurate coverage for cloud vulnerabilities, exploits and malware, detection of misconfigurations and other attack paths
• Analyze a broad range of one-day vulnerabilities in cloud and container services
• Support our efforts to secure Prisma Cloud and actively engage in evaluating our product security
• Ensure the well being of team members and maintain zero to low attrition rates

Qualifications

Your Experience

• Extensive experience in security research
• Multiple years of experience managing a group of researchers
• A proven record of technical ability is required, including experience in cloud security, vulnerability discovery and exploitation, reverse engineering experience, and familiarity with code analysis techniques
• Excellent interpersonal skills and high technical adeptness

Additional Information

The Team

Our team is considered among the top research groups in the area of cloud and application security. We are a group of superstar security professionals who are excited about making cloud native technologies and applications more secure. As the research front of the Prisma Cloud group we have many responsibilities, including discovering zero-day vulnerabilities, threat actors targeting cloud, the analysis of one-day vulnerabilities and tracking the misuse of these vulnerabilities in the wild. The intelligence we gather from our research is directly integrated and enriched within Prisma Cloud and a multiple of Palo Alto Networks products to better protect our customer base.

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.

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Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.