Cybersecurity Threat Hunter

Cybersecurity Threat Hunter

Microsoft's Detection and Response Team (DART) is seeking a skilled and experienced Cybersecurity Threat Hunter to join the team in Japan. DART is the first port of call for many customers during a security incident. This pivotal, customer-facing position identifies adversary activity, determines compromise scope and turns findings into clear response actions.

You will lead hypothesis-driven hunts, establish technical priorities and act as a trusted technical partner for customers during urgent response activity. Working with lead investigators, infrastructure engineers, reverse engineers and incident coordinators, you will help customers understand adversary activity, visibility gaps and durable security improvements.

As part of a globally distributed, mission-driven team, you will share research, mentor colleagues and help shape the future of Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident Response.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Employees are expected to demonstrate a growth mindset, innovation, collaboration, respect, integrity, accountability and inclusion.

Responsibilities

• Set hunt objectives, hypotheses, priorities and evidence requirements using threat intelligence, adversary tactics, techniques and procedures, and customer-specific risk context.
• Develop, test and refine hunts using large-scale correlation of endpoint, cloud, identity, network and third-party telemetry.
• Operate as a platform- and vendor-agnostic hunter across Windows, Linux, macOS, multi-cloud and third-party technologies, using the telemetry, forensic artefacts and security tooling required by each customer environment.
• Determine adversary presence, compromise scope and visibility gaps; establish what is known, what remains uncertain and what additional collection or analysis is needed.
• Author and optimise queries, automation and responsible AI-enabled workflows to improve hunt scale, analytical quality and time to detection.
• Convert investigations and research into durable detections, analytics, mitigations, threat intelligence and product or architectural improvements.
• Lead multiple hunt workstreams during high-impact incidents, coordinate priorities and dependencies, maintain evidentiary documentation and support post-incident and root-cause analysis.
• Brief customer technical teams, executives, internal stakeholders and partners with clear findings, coverage, limitations and response options.
• Provide technical guidance, share research and mentor junior hunters while protecting DART information, tools and operational security.

Qualifications

Required / Minimum Qualifications

• Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security or related field OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security or related field AND experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale data analysis or security research; OR equivalent practical cybersecurity experience.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience in threat hunting, Windows forensics, Linux or macOS analysis, or investigating identity-based attacks across Active Directory, Entra ID or other enterprise identity platforms.
• Demonstrated experience authoring queries against large-scale security telemetry, including scripting or automation.
• Ability to correlate and assess evidence from multiple sources, identify compromise scope, assess visibility gaps and clearly explain findings and uncertainty.
• Strong customer-facing written and verbal communication, including executive briefings.
• Flexibility to work non-standard business hours that may include evening, nighttime, weekends and/or holidays.
• Business fluency in both Japanese and English.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven hypothesis-led threat hunting at enterprise scale, correlating endpoint, cloud, identity and network telemetry to identify adversary activity and visibility gaps.
• Advanced Kusto Query Language (KQL) skills, with ability to transform data at scale.
• Strong forensic capability across Windows, Linux and macOS, including analysis of endpoint artefacts and memory where required.
• Platform- and vendor-agnostic security experience across Microsoft, AWS, GCP and third-party SIEM, EDR, identity, network and email technologies.
• Experience leading hunt workstreams in high-pressure, customer-facing incident response while balancing the need for rapid recovery.
• Experience converting hunt outcomes into durable detections, analytics, mitigations and threat intelligence.
• Demonstrated technical leadership through research, stakeholder influence, process improvement and mentoring.
• Relevant security certifications or equivalent practical expertise.

Security Clearance Requirements

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check and any additional checks needed for customer or government work.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.