# Staff Security ML Researcher

**Company:** [Illumio](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/illumio)
**Location:** Sunnyvale, CA
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $221k – $265k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Python, pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Machine Learning, Statistical Modeling, Anomaly Detection, Mitre Att&Ck, Graph Analytics, Neo4J, SQL, AWS, Kubernetes
**Posted:** 2026-09-11

> Develops machine learning and graph-based security analytics for threat detection, attacker behavior modeling, and cyber-risk assessment. The role requires substantial experience in cybersecurity or machine learning, production model deployment, large-scale telemetry analysis, and strong Python and SQL skills.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models for anomaly detection, threat detection, behavioral profiling, and security-risk prediction.
- Apply statistical techniques and predictive modeling to evaluate breach likelihood, attack exposure, and segmentation effectiveness.
- Analyze large-scale security datasets to identify attacker behavior, emerging threats, and MITRE ATT&CK-aligned patterns.
- Develop threat-scoring and risk-assessment models to prioritize remediation and security investments.
- Use graph-based analysis to model attack paths, quantify lateral-movement risk, and recommend mitigations.
- Design and maintain scalable data pipelines for model training, validation, and analytics.
- Partner with engineers to productionize models and analytics systems with scalability, reliability, and observability.
- Conduct experiments and hypothesis-driven analysis to improve detection quality and reduce false positives.
- Collaborate with product managers, designers, engineers, and threat researchers to embed ML-driven security insights into customer-facing products.
- Research graph analytics, graph neural networks, probabilistic modeling, and AI-driven threat detection.
- Contribute to patents, technical publications, conference presentations, and thought leadership.

## Requirements
- 5+ years of experience in security analytics, threat research, detection engineering, data science, or machine learning.
- Strong Python programming skills and experience with data science and machine learning frameworks.
- Experience designing, training, validating, and deploying ML or statistical models in production.
- Experience working with large-scale security, networking, cloud, or infrastructure telemetry.
- Strong understanding of model evaluation, feature engineering, experimentation, and imbalanced datasets.
- Experience applying ML or analytics to cybersecurity problems such as anomaly detection, behavioral analysis, threat hunting, or risk assessment.
- Familiarity with MITRE ATT&CK and common security telemetry sources.
- Strong SQL and data-querying skills.
- Excellent communication skills, including translating technical findings into product and business recommendations.

## Nice to Have
- 7–10+ years of experience spanning cybersecurity, machine learning, data science, or threat research.
- Experience with graph-based security analytics, Neo4j, graph databases, or graph algorithms.
- Knowledge of graph machine learning, graph neural networks, or link prediction.
- Experience productionizing ML models in cloud environments using AWS, Kubernetes, or similar platforms.
- Experience developing risk-scoring systems, recommendation engines, or predictive analytics solutions.
- MS or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Statistics, or a related field.
- Cybersecurity-company experience in cloud security, network security, endpoint security, or threat intelligence.
- Experience integrating threat-intelligence feeds and enrichment data into ML workflows.
- Publications, patents, open-source contributions, or conference presentations related to security or applied ML.
- CISSP, GIAC, or advanced machine-learning credentials.

## Similar jobs

- [Staff Engineer, Autonomy Capabilities – Maritime](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6584cef4-dd17-40e1-854e-fb8a2411eb50) - Shield AI - Washington, DC - $221k – $331k/yr
- [Staff Software Engineer - AI Agent Evaluations](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/d3ace257-7e34-447e-83ab-6d583c58936a) - Idme - Mountain View, CA - $218k – $271k/yr
- [Staff Software Engineer, Model Infrastructure](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/e7669ca0-c832-485f-9b10-dafc4bf42dc3) - Harvey - San Francisco, CA - $231k – $340k/yr
- [Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy Capabilities](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/02d97f5d-f4e7-445e-8842-756b55d1843c) - Shield AI - San Mateo, CA - $234k – $351k/yr
- [Staff Software Engineer - Snowflake Feature Store](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/66983557-05aa-4583-a35d-38df9881675d) - Snowflake - Bellevue, WA - $236k – $339k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/bab77711-f720-4ee8-b66d-39c5cda04f76
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/bab77711-f720-4ee8-b66d-39c5cda04f76