Senior Staff Researcher (Unit 42)

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks®, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you’re ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you’re in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us!

We believe collaboration thrives in person. That’s why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it’s needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes.

Job Summary

We are seeking a Senior Staff Researcher for Unit 42’s Threat Intelligence Delivery Execution (TIDE) Team. This team plays a critical role in creating timely, relevant, and actionable threat insights to drive business and security outcomes for our customers. We are looking for a high performing, experienced CTI analyst with a strong track record in understanding CTI stakeholder intelligence needs and developing tailored intelligence in line with their security use cases.

Key Responsibilities

• Deliver fused intelligence insights on a recurring basis to clients across industry verticals focusing on relevant cyber threat activities, trends, and shifts in the cyber threat landscape trends.

• Provide tailored research and analysis for client-based RFIs to drive business and security outcomes.

• Create cyber threat profiles for clients to identify top cyber threat activities, groups, and trends relevant to a client’s unique business operations then provide tailored defensive recommendations.

• Develop structured intelligence insights tracking adversary trends, motivations, organizational priorities, and historical region and industry targeting patterns.

• Act as a resource for colleagues, sharing expertise and best practices to enhance team capabilities.

• Integrate Generative AI, NotebookLM, and other artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions across all phases of the intelligence lifecycle to improve analytic workflows.

Qualifications

Required

• 7 years minimum in the CTI field with experience in threat research, analytic production, and client-facing delivery.

• Strong knowledge of cyber threat actors, noteworthy attacks, and ability to quickly recognize inflection points, signalling shifts, evolution, or deviation from threat activity baselines or industry norms.

• Ability to contextualize cyber events, identify how the events fit into a current or historical pattern, the impact on an industry or organization, and tailored defensive recommendations.

• Experience operating under short fuse deadlines, managing concurrent tasks, and thriving in complex and sometimes ambiguous situations.

• Strong writing and presentation skills with the ability to communicate threat intelligence effectively to diverse audiences, including C-suite level customers.

• Deep experience with cyber threat intelligence frameworks and analytical techniques preferred.

• Demonstrated ability to coordinate with cross-organizational threat analysts, facilitating collaboration, and aligning efforts to achieve common goals.

• Experience with prompt engineering and leveraging Google’s AI capabilities to support development of intelligence products.

• Comfortable adapting to change as part of a growing team.

• Must be a self-starter and creative thinker.
   

Preference for

• History of triaging and modeling open source data, telemetry, and other intelligence sources to quickly respond to requests for information. Ideally with previous experience in Synapse or other hypergraphs.

• Experience serving as a CTI analyst supporting customers in vendor space.

Compensation Disclosure

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.

$139,600.00 - $225,775.00/yr

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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.