This role suits an experienced practitioner specializing in security analytics and machine learning who is based near Sunnyvale, California. The position is a full-time Staff Security ML Researcher based at the company headquarters.
Role Overview
Illumio is seeking a Staff Security ML Researcher to develop machine learning-driven approaches for threat detection, risk assessment, and security analytics. Working within the Office of the CTO and Security team, this position involves applying advanced statistical methods, machine learning, and graph-based analysis to identify threats and quantify cyber risk across complex enterprise environments.
Key Responsibilities
Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models that identify anomalous behavior, detect threats, and predict security risk across complex enterprise environments.
Apply statistical techniques and predictive modeling to evaluate breach likelihood, attack exposure, and segmentation effectiveness.
Build behavioral profiling, anomaly detection, clustering, classification, and forecasting models using large-scale security telemetry.
Evaluate model performance, reduce false positives, and continuously improve detection quality through experimentation and data-driven analysis.
Analyze large-scale security datasets to identify attacker behaviors, emerging threats, and patterns aligned to frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK.
Develop threat scoring and risk assessment models that help customers prioritize remediation and security investments.
Leverage graph-based analysis techniques to model attack paths, quantify lateral movement risk, and recommend mitigation strategies.
Design and maintain scalable data pipelines used for model training, validation, and analytics.
Partner with engineers to productionize models and analytics systems while ensuring scalability, reliability, and observability.
Collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers to embed ML-driven security insights into customer-facing experiences.
Requirements
5+ years of experience in security analytics, threat research, detection engineering, data science, or machine learning.
Strong Python programming skills, including experience with data science and machine learning frameworks such as Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.
Experience designing, training, validating, and deploying machine learning or statistical models in production environments.
Proven ability to work with large-scale telemetry datasets from security, networking, cloud, or infrastructure environments.
Strong understanding of model evaluation, feature engineering, experimentation, and handling imbalanced datasets.
Experience applying analytics or machine learning techniques to cybersecurity problems such as anomaly detection, behavioral analysis, threat hunting, or risk assessment.
Familiarity with security frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and common security telemetry sources.
Strong SQL and data querying skills.
Excellent communication skills with experience translating technical findings into actionable business and product recommendations.
Requirement to work on-site four days a week at the Sunnyvale, California headquarters.
Nice to Have
7-10+ years of experience spanning cybersecurity, machine learning, data science, or threat research.
Experience building graph-based security analytics using Neo4j, graph databases, or graph algorithms.
Knowledge of graph machine learning techniques, including graph neural networks or link prediction methods.
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.
Background at a cybersecurity company focused on cloud security, network security, endpoint security, or threat intelligence.
Experience integrating external threat intelligence feeds and enrichment data into ML workflows.
Publications, patents, open-source contributions, or conference presentations related to security or applied machine learning.
Industry certifications such as CISSP, GIAC, or advanced machine learning credentials.
Skills and Tools
Python
Pandas
NumPy
Scikit-learn
TensorFlow
PyTorch
SQL
Neo4j
AWS
Kubernetes
Salary and Benefits
Salary range of $221,000 to $265,000.
About the Company
Illumio is a leader in ransomware and breach containment, redefining how organizations contain cyberattacks and enable operational resilience. Powered by the Illumio AI Security Graph, the breach containment platform identifies and contains threats across hybrid multi-cloud environments.
How to Apply
Apply on the official company careers page.
