Remote Threat Hunting Researcher — Impact Defender

CamWebDir; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 117,000 - 189,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Threat Hunting Researcher within Unit 42 to help multinational organizations stay ahead of adversaries and cyber threats. You will investigate hunting leads using IOCs, threat intel, and detections, guiding customers through urgent requests and escalating high-impact events to leadership.

You will collaborate with the MDR team and produce threat hunting reports, ensuring timely responses and continuous improvement in detection workflows and incident handling

Qualifications

• 3+ years of cybersecurity experience in threat hunting, incident investigation, SOC analysis, detection engineering, DFIR, or MDR.
• Strong understanding of the evolving threat landscape, attack tools, tactics, techniques, and networking/security fundamentals.
• Experience investigating suspicious activity, security incidents, or targeted threats across endpoints, networks, identity, and cloud.
• Ability to work independently, make sound investigative decisions, and elevate findings requiring additional review.
• Experience handling customer-facing security requests, including clear written communication, investigation summaries, and recommendations.
• Understanding attacker behaviors, including attack vectors, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, lateral movement, and exfiltration.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a critical line of defense by providing coverage for core threat hunting activities.
• Collaborate with and guide customers by responding to urgent hunting-related requests and suspected security incidents.
• Execute threat hunting reports and workflows, investigate results, and support timely customer reporting.
• Investigate hunting leads based on IOCs, threat intelligence, and internal detections.
• Monitor the threat landscape and prepare initial context for emerging campaigns to enable deeper investigations.
• Ensure timely and appropriate escalation of major or high-impact security events to leadership.
• Provide support and assistance to the MDR team for hunting-related activities.
• Provide ongoing feedback on findings, reports, queries, and workflows to support continuous improvement.

Skills

Threat hunting

Incident investigation

SOC analysis

Detection engineering

DFIR

MDR

Written communication

Tools

Python

SQL

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Threat Hunting Researcher within Unit 42 to help multinational organizations stay ahead of adversaries and cyber threats. You will investigate hunting leads using IOCs, threat intel, and detections, guiding customers through urgent requests and escalating high-impact events to leadership.

You will collaborate with the MDR team and produce threat hunting reports, ensuring timely responses and continuous improvement in detection workflows and incident handling