Security Research Engineer

About Proofpoint

Proofpoint is a global leader in human- and agent-centric cybersecurity, dedicated to protecting how people, data, and AI agents connect across various digital tools. Serving over 80 of the Fortune 100 and thousands of enterprises, Proofpoint stops threats, prevents data loss, and builds resilience. Our mission is to safeguard the digital world, empowering secure and confident work. Join us to defend data and protect people.

At Proofpoint, you'll be part of a global team redefining cybersecurity, guided by our BRAVE core values: Bold, Responsive, Accountable, Visionary, and Exceptional. We are passionate about finding the right people to help us build and enhance our security platform, blend innovation with speed in a cloud environment, analyze new threats with data-driven intelligence, and collaborate with customers to solve complex security challenges.

The Role: Security Research Engineer

As a Security Research Engineer on Proofpoint’s Threat Research team, you will join a highly collaborative, industry-leading team focused on tracking threat actors and their associated tactics, techniques, and procedures. This role involves creating tooling to enhance or automate workflows and facilitate tracking and data analysis processes, directly impacting the efficacy of Proofpoint products and the quality of intelligence.

You will also have the opportunity to undertake research to find and remediate malicious activity in Proofpoint datasets. Your work will directly impact Proofpoint product efficacy, intelligence quality, and customer protection. We encourage applications even if the 'Senior' title doesn't perfectly match your experience, as talent and mission fit are our priorities.

Your Day-to-Day

• Stay current with the evolving threat landscape and modern tech stacks crucial for security research.
• Partner with threat researchers to design and implement tools and systems for tracking, contextualizing, and reporting malicious activity.
• Liaise with other Proofpoint engineering units, communicating stakeholder requirements and consulting on security-focused user needs.
• Work effectively as part of a remote team using various communication tools.

What You Bring To The Team

• A strong passion for threat research and comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape.
• Ability to understand researcher needs, translate them into efficient system requirements, and implement solutions.
• Experience developing tooling, primarily in Python.
• Proficiency in integrating existing tools into comprehensive, deployable systems (DevOps, architecture experience).
• Experience with large datasets and related tools like relational databases, AWS, Splunk, Pandas, and Jupyter.
• Self-direction, accountability, and outstanding communication skills for presenting complex technical topics.

Nice to Have

• Understanding of malware analysis fundamentals, including sandbox analysis interpretation.
• Experience with LLM and agent/agentic framework development.
• Prior experience tracking threat actors or malware families.
• Experience performing these tasks in a fully remote environment.

Travel: 10%

Key skills/competency

• Cybersecurity
• Threat Intelligence
• Security Research
• Python Development
• Data Analysis
• Malware Analysis
• AWS
• Splunk
• DevOps
• System Architecture