Threat Hunting Researcher (Unit 42) at Palo Alto Networks in Remote - USA - CA

Job description

• As a Threat Hunting Researcher in Unit 42, you will help multinational organizations stay one step ahead of adversaries and cyber threats. You will serve as a critical line of defense by providing coverage for core threat hunting activities and investigating hunting leads based on IOCs, threat intelligence, and internal detections. By collaborating with and guiding customers through urgent hunting-related requests, you will play a vital role in responding to suspected security incidents and ensuring timely escalation of high-impact events.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a critical line of defense by providing coverage for core threat hunting activities.
• Collaborate with and guide customers by responding to urgent hunting-related requests and suspected security incidents.
• Execute threat hunting reports and workflows, investigate results, and support timely customer reporting.
• Investigate hunting leads based on IOCs, threat intelligence, and internal detections.
• Monitor the threat landscape and prepare initial context for emerging campaigns to enable deeper investigations.
• Ensure timely and appropriate escalation of major or high-impact security events to leadership.
• Provide support and assistance to the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) team for hunting-related activities.
• Provide ongoing feedback on findings, reports, queries, and workflows to support continuous improvement.

Requirements

• 3+ years of relevant cybersecurity experience in threat hunting, incident investigation, SOC analysis, detection engineering, DFIR, or MDR.
• Strong understanding of the evolving threat landscape, attack tools, tactics, techniques, and networking/security fundamentals.
• Experience investigating suspicious activity, security incidents, or targeted threats across endpoints, networks, identity, and cloud.
• Ability to work independently, make sound investigative decisions, and escalate findings requiring additional review.
• Experience handling customer-facing security requests, including clear written communication, investigation summaries, and recommendations.
• Understanding of attacker behaviors, including attack vectors, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, lateral movement, and exfiltration.
• Background in writing, modifying, or executing detections, hunting queries, or log-based investigations.
• Familiarity with organizational cybersecurity measures, including protective tools, response actions, and remediation techniques.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English, with strong attention to detail for documenting investigation logic.
• Experience in an Incident Response environment.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Familiarity with malware analysis.
• Experience writing technical reports, investigation summaries, or customer-facing security analysis.
• Ability to analyze and understand the infrastructure, behaviors, and objectives of malicious campaigns.

Skills

Required

• Threat hunting
• Incident investigation
• SOC analysis
• Detection engineering
• DFIR
• MDR
• Networking/security fundamentals
• Investigation of suspicious activity
• Customer-facing security requests
• Written communication
• Oral communication
• Attention to detail

Preferred

• Python
• SQL
• Malware analysis
• Technical report writing
• Analysis of malicious campaigns

Benefits

• The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/com-missioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.
• $117,000.00 - $189,200.00/yr