You will lead infrastructure recovery and identity containment workstreams, establish technical priorities and act as a trusted technical partner for customers during urgent response activity. Working with lead investigators, threat hunters, reverse engineers and incident coordinators, you will help customers make evidence-led recovery decisions and improve durable security outcomes.
As part of a globally distributed, mission-driven team, you will share practical recovery expertise, mentor colleagues and help shape the future of Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident Response.
Employees are expected to demonstrate a growth mindset, innovation, collaboration, respect, integrity, accountability and inclusion.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
Responsibilities
As a Cybersecurity Infrastructure Engineer, you will lead and support evidence-driven infrastructure response, identity recovery and technical hardening workstreams across enterprise on-premises and cloud environments.
Lead security research across the threat landscape, using multiple data sources to identify vulnerabilities, track attackers, and guide priorities.
Strengthen security data quality and access while maintaining privacy standards and improving analysis through tools and AI.
Direct incident response and large-scale security reviews, identifying root causes, closing protection gaps, and keeping stakeholders informed.
Develop cross-functional solutions to prevent, detect, and disrupt attacks, incorporating customer feedback into mitigations and security practices.
Set infrastructure recovery objectives, technical priorities and evidence requirements for identity, directory, privileged access and enterprise infrastructure workstreams.
Lead or support containment and recovery for compromised Active Directory, Entra ID, Tier 0 and hybrid infrastructure environments.
Assess compromise scope, recovery readiness, trust relationships, privileged access pathways and security-control gaps; establish what is known, what remains uncertain and what additional validation is needed.
Direct or guide technical response activities that balance containment, recovery urgency, evidence preservation and customer business constraints.
Collect, preserve and analyse infrastructure and identity evidence needed to support investigation, containment and recovery decisions.
Serve as a technical point of contact for infrastructure recovery; brief customer technical teams, executives and internal stakeholders with clear findings, priorities and decision options.
Identify skill, access, telemetry and resource gaps early; work with incident coordinators and leadership to resolve dependencies, obtain specialist support and escalate delivery risks.
Maintain technical documentation and clear follow-the-sun handovers covering evidence, decisions, risks, dependencies and next actions; support final reporting and lessons learned.
Contribute to proactive services such as compromise assessments, identity posture reviews and infrastructure resilience improvements.
Qualifications
Required 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 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection
OR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 4+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection
OR equivalent experience.
Other 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: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.
Preferred Qualifications
Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection
OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 6+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection
OR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 8+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection
OR equivalent experience.
Demonstrated hands-on experience with Active Directory, Entra ID or other enterprise identity platforms in complex enterprise environments.
Solid understanding of identity-related attack techniques, including Golden Ticket, Pass-the-Hash, Kerberoasting, credential theft, privilege escalation and lateral movement.
Experience supporting identity recovery, infrastructure recovery and post-breach hardening decisions under operational pressure.
Familiarity with Windows Server infrastructure, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy, privileged access and hybrid identity dependencies.
Ability to script or automate recovery, validation or analysis tasks using PowerShell or similar tools.
Demonstrated ability to explain technical findings, dependencies, risk and residual uncertainty clearly to customers and internal stakeholders.
Flexibility to work non-standard business hours that may include evening, nighttime, weekends and/or holidays.
Experience in cybersecurity incident response, digital forensics, threat hunting or enterprise recovery.
Familiarity with Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Sentinel, Entra ID, Microsoft Graph, Azure, Windows security eventing and third-party SIEM/SOAR or EDR platforms.
Experience leading infrastructure workstreams in high-pressure, customer-facing incident response while balancing investigation, containment and recovery needs.
Demonstrated ability to translate technical constraints into practical response plans and executive-ready recommendations.
Relevant security, identity, cloud or incident response certifications, or equivalent practical expertise.
Demonstrated research, analytical automation, data-quality improvement or technical mentoring that strengthens infrastructure response capability.
Security Research IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $160,200 - $261,000 per year.
- Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
- https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
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.
