Palo Alto Sr Dir Security Research WildFire 

United States, California 

119631988

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

About WildFire

WildFire, deployed globally, is our cloud-delivered security service and an advanced malware analysis platform. WildFire is a highly successful and rapidly growing cloud security service, continuously evolving to combat sophisticated cyber threats.

Your Career

As the Sr. Director of Security Research for WildFire Engineering, you will lead a critical function at the intersection of cutting-edge security research and robust engineering. You will be responsible for defining the future of malware analysis and prevention within the WildFire platform, driving innovation, and ensuring our capabilities stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape. This is a strategic leadership role that requires a deep passion for security, a strong background in building mission-critical cloud services, and the ability to lead a team at the epicenter of cybersecurity innovation.

Your Impact

• Lead Security Research Strategy: Define and execute the strategic vision for WildFire's security research, including identifying emerging threats, developing novel detection techniques, and evolving our analysis capabilities. This includes pioneering AI research and development to enhance our detection efficacy.

• Drive Innovation: Foster a culture of innovation within the team, encouraging the exploration of new technologies (e.g., advanced AI/ML for threat detection), research methodologies, and proactive threat intelligence gathering. You'll also drive initiatives around AI Model Scanning to identify and mitigate risks within AI-driven systems.

• Team Leadership & Growth: Manage, mentor, and grow a globally distributed team of highly skilled engineers and managers. Foster a culture of deep technical curiosity, rapid innovation, and relentless focus on stopping threats for our customers.

• Strategic Execution: Lead the wildfire engineering team and collaborate with Product Management and the other cross functional teams to translate cutting-edge research into product reality. Drive an agile development process to rapidly deliver new analysis environments (e.g., Windows, macOS, Linux, Android) and detection capabilities.

• Threat Landscape Expertise: Maintain a comprehensive understanding of the global threat landscape, including adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), malware trends, vulnerability exploits, and emerging threats related to AI systems.

• Operational Excellence: Ensure the ongoing effectiveness and performance of WildFire's detection capabilities, driving improvements in fidelity, coverage, and performance.

Your Experience

• 10+ years of experience in cybersecurity, with at least 7 years in a senior leadership role including managing other managers.

• Deep expertise in malware analysis, reverse engineering, exploit analysis, and threat intelligence.

• Proven track record of delivering innovative security solutions and significantly impacting product capabilities, with a strong emphasis on leveraging and securing AI technologies.

• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures and distributed systems. Experience with large-scale data processing for security analytics is a significant plus.

• Extensive experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence applied to cybersecurity problems (e.g., anomaly detection, classification, AI model scanning).

• Familiarity with public cloud environments (GCP, AWS, Azure) and their security implications.

• Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or a related technical field; equivalent practical experience will also be considered.

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/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $250000 - $343500/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.