Senior Security Research Engineer

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale , unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter.

The Elastic Security Endpoint Protections team researches, designs, and builds the visibility and prevention capabilities at the core of Elastic Defend, our endpoint and SIEM security solution. We are looking for a Senior Security Research Engineer to help lead our efforts to build innovative features that secure our users against the latest emerging threats.

Responsibilities

• Research emerging attacker techniques and turn them into shipped protections. Study real-world tradecraft across in-memory threats, injection, credential theft, ransomware, and kernel tampering, then design protections that hold up against an adversary actively trying to defeat them.
• Build and extend endpoint visibility. Instrument new event sources across Windows, macOS, and Linux, deepen the telemetry we already collect, and close the gaps attackers rely on.
• Develop production code that runs everywhere. Write performant, stable C/C++ that executes on millions of endpoints.
• Reverse engineer malware and study evasion. Learn how attackers bypass endpoint security controls in the wild, and feed that understanding directly into the protections you design and harden.
• Own efficacy end to end. Review customer telemetry at fleet scale, investigate false positives and performance regressions, and establish mitigation strategies.
• Extend protection parity across platforms. Bring the depth we have on Windows to macOS and Linux, and support new hardware architectures as they reach the enterprise.
• Collaborate across Elastic Security. Implement endpoint code alongside peers in multiple countries and time zones, and work with the detection engineers, malware researchers, and data scientists who rely on your telemetry.
• Help lead the team's technical direction. Take point on initiatives that span multiple releases, raise the bar in design and code reviews, and mentor engineers earlier in their careers.
• Publish and present. Share your research on Elastic Security Labs, present at conferences, and contribute to the open source projects that organizations around the world rely on.

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional experience analyzing attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and building detection methods for real security threats.
• 6+ years of development experience in C, C++, and Python.
• Deep operating system internals knowledge, in both kernel and user mode.
• In-depth reverse engineering and malware analysis experience.
• An adversarial instinct.
• A collaborative mentality and an eagerness to learn new skills, new platforms, and emerging technologies.
• You have a proven track record of using AI to accelerate development, debug complex systems, and optimize code.
• You work autonomously and can drive decisions and results in a distributed team.
• Passion for protecting the world's data from attack!

Nice to Have

• Vulnerability research and exploit development.
• Red teaming experience.
• Kernel-mode development.
• Ownership or long-term maintenance of an open-source security tool.
• Conference speaking experience.
• Experience applying machine learning to endpoint security problems.
• Familiarity with the Elastic Stack.

Compensation

The typical starting salary range for this role is: $133,100-$210,600 USD In select locations, an alternate range may apply: $159,900-$252,900 USD