Senior Security Researcher

*This is a hybrid role for San Jose, CA; Austin, TX; Boston, MA; or Dublin, Ireland

Position Overview

Vectra AI’s Security Research team studies how attackers operate and turns that knowledge into capabilities that help customers find and respond to threats. We are looking for a Senior Security Researcher to help define and investigate the security challenges created by enterprise AI adoption and AI-enabled attackers.

You will study how agents, copilots, AI-connected applications, and their identities can be misused or compromised. You will also examine how attackers use AI to accelerate familiar attack techniques. Your research will connect activity across identity, cloud, and network environments, with a focus on what customers can observe, investigate, and act on. This is an emerging area: you will help test assumptions, identify gaps in visibility, and shape the work that follows.

What You Will Do

* Develop threat models for enterprise AI systems and agent-mediated activity, including delegated access, service and workload identities, cloud agent infrastructure, connectors, and downstream actions.
* Investigate how AI changes attacker operations, including the speed, scale, sequencing, and coordination of reconnaissance, credential abuse, lateral movement, and data theft.
* Recreate realistic attack and misuse scenarios in controlled environments. Collect evidence, map the observable behavior across identity, cloud, and network, and distinguish confirmed signals from hypotheses.
* Assess existing detection coverage, identify telemetry and attribution gaps, and work with Data Science and Engineering to develop and validate new behavioral detections.
* Help connect an agent’s actions to the human, application, identity, workload, tool, and resource involved, even when a single log source shows only part of the chain.
* Translate research into clear findings, attack samples, coverage assessments, and recommendations that Product, Engineering, customer-facing teams, and customers can use.
* Stay close to emerging techniques and real incidents, contribute original research, and help Vectra decide which problems warrant further investment.

What Will You Need

* Approximately 5 or more years in security research, detection engineering, incident response, threat hunting, red teaming, or a related field, with evidence of independently led technical investigations.
* Strong understanding of attacker behavior and enterprise identity, including authentication, permissions, tokens, service principals, or workload identities.
* Hands-on experience investigating security activity in at least one major cloud platform and the ability to reason across cloud, identity, and network evidence.
* Ability to build repeatable labs or simulations, analyze logs and telemetry, and turn findings into detection requirements or coverage tests.
* Programming or scripting ability, such as Python, for research, data analysis, or test automation.
* Clear technical writing and the judgment to explain what the evidence shows, what remains uncertain, and why it matters to customers.
* Ability to work closely with researchers, data scientists, engineers, and product teams in a fast-changing problem space.

What Will Help You

* Research or operational experience with AI agents, copilots, model services, agent frameworks, tool integrations, or AI-related incidents.
* Familiarity with attacks involving delegated authority, OAuth applications, cloud control planes, prompt injection consequences, or compromised agent infrastructure.
* Experience correlating activity across multiple data sources or measuring detection efficacy against realistic attack sequences.
* Published research, open-source tools, conference talks, or other contributions to the security community.

Our competitive total rewards package includes cash compensation within the range provided below. Actual pay for this position may vary based on the hired candidate’s location, experience and relevant incumbent pay position.
Vectra Total Rewards
$150,000—$230,000 USD

Vectra provides a comprehensive total rewards package that supports the financial, physical, mental and overall health of our employees and their families. Compensation includes competitive base pay, incentive plan eligibility, and participation in the employee equity plan (stock options). Specific benefits offered varies by location, but commonly include health care insurance, income protection / life insurance, access to retirement savings plans, behavioral & emotional wellness services, generous time away from work, and a comprehensive employee recognition program.

Vectra is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.