Principal Threat Researcher, Software Engineer

Role Description

As a Principal Threat Researcher (Counter-Threat Ops), you don't just track threats—you neutralize them. You are a key pillar of the Threat Intelligence (TI) team, specifically focused on the art of adversary disruption. You will lead the charge in identifying, tracking, and imposing friction on threat actors targeting the Salesforce ecosystem. This is a "hands-on-keyboard" technical leadership role as an individual contributor. You will perform deep-dive research across massive datasets to extract tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), build complex attacker profiles, and turn that intelligence into action. Whether you are partnering with hyperscalers to take down attacker infrastructure or working alongside multi-national law enforcement to support criminal prosecution, your goal is to make it expensive and dangerous for adversaries to operate against Salesforce and our Customers.

Responsibilities

• Lead initiatives to disrupt threat actor operations by leveraging Salesforce infrastructure and strategic partnerships with hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, MAS), CDNs, and network security providers.
• Develop high-fidelity technical evidence and attribution data to support US and European law enforcement in the successful criminal prosecution of threat actors.
• Deepen Salesforce’s reach into the broader cyber intelligence community, fostering peer-to-peer partnerships with other industry disruption teams to build a collective defensive picture.
• Perform expert-level tracking of advanced e-crime and state-sponsored actors, distilling complex tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) into actionable intelligence for executives and technical stakeholders.
• Build custom scripts, investigative tools, and automation (Python, SQL, Splunk) to scale research and enable "on-the-fly" analysis during active campaigns or incident response.
• Serve as a technical mentor on the Threat Intelligence team, guiding junior researchers and driving the direction of investigations through deep subject matter expertise.
• Act as a central bridge between Incident Response, Security Engineering, and Platform Defense to ensure intelligence directly hardens our environment.

Qualifications

• You have recognized, first-hand knowledge of how advanced adversaries operate and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), with a focus on AWS, GCP, Azure, and other cloud providers.
• 10+ years of hands-on experience identifying, tracking, and disrupting advanced cyber threat actors (government-backed and advanced e-crime adversaries), including successful referrals to international Law Enforcement agencies.
• 5+ years hands-on experience with strategic intelligence writing and standard conventions (BLUF, Diamond Model, MITRE ATT&CK), with a proven track record of authoring dozens of research articles and public-facing blog posts.
• Established threat intelligence practitioner and active member of private, invite-only Information Security trust groups with extensive industry and community contacts.
• Experience with Cyber Threat Intelligence writing for both technical, non-technical, and executive audiences - ideally with threat briefings, threat reports, blog posts, or similar finished intelligence.
• A capable oral and written communicator, you are able to engage others in the business at multiple levels to translate threat research into actionable recommendations to shape strategy and decisions.
• Experience conducting and correlating threat research using OSINT and proprietary tools, including infrastructure analysis, malware telemetry, and full attack lifecycle tracking.
• You operate autonomously to drive projects and have experience mentoring and supporting junior analysts in a globally distributed or remote team environment.
• You have an understanding of existing and emerging threats to an organization spanning multiple industries and threat profiles.
• 3+ years experience scripting, automating, and building investigative tooling (Python, Bash, SQL, Splunk) and using YARA or Sigma for threat hunting.
• Identify patterns and trends across various data sources and distill findings concisely.

Preferred Requirements

• Extensive experience collaborating with global law enforcement agencies (e.g., FBI, Europol) on attribution and evidence collection resulting in successful prosecutions and takedowns.
• Experience using Threat Intelligence Platforms, and building integrations with these platforms.
• Extensive experience using Machine Learning automation for the detection and disruption of high-harm groups and platform-based abuse.
• Deep familiarity with reverse engineering, malware analysis, and knowledge of underground communities.
• Experience with security analysis tools (Jupyter notebooks, Splunk, ElasticSearch, etc).
• Extensive experience with uncovering threats in AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
• Expert-level use of hunting/IR tools for host and network analysis.
• Recognized industry leader in the threat Community.
• You have performed all of the above “at scale“ in a large, complex environment.

Benefits

• Time off programs
• Medical, dental, vision
• Mental health support
• Paid parental leave
• Life and disability insurance
• 401(k)
• Employee stock purchasing program