Principal AI Security Researcher

Microsoft•Apply•Published 2 hours ago•First seen 1 hours ago

Overview

Security is one of the most critical priorities for our customers in a world of growing digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world safer by empowering every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that delivers end-to-end, simplified protection. The Microsoft Security organization advances this mission by helping secure digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds across customers' heterogeneous environments, while also protecting Microsoft's internal estate. Our culture is grounded in a growth mindset, inspiring excellence, and enabling teams and leaders to bring their full potential each day.

The Microsoft Security Research (MSecR) Purple Team sits at the intersection of offense, defense, and intelligence. AI is now everywhere: organizations and people across every industry are adopting large language models, copilots, and autonomous agents, and these systems bring a brand-new attack surface that can be manipulated, misused, and exploited in ways traditional software cannot. In Microsoft Security, we protect AI from these attacks. We are looking for a Principal-level security researcher who combines a real security background with a deep, hands-on understanding of how modern AI works and how it breaks. You will help execute and conduct AI attacks through purple team simulations, using what you find to make AI safer and to inform our security products so they protect customers better.

This role is for someone who wants to shape how AI attacks are simulated and defended at scale. You will set methodology, build tooling, influence product direction, and drive innovation in attacking and defending AI systems (Security for AI).

Responsibilities

As a Principal Security Researcher, you will:

Lead the design and execution of purple team simulations aimed at making AI safer, conducting realistic AI attacks whose findings inform our security products and help them protect customers more effectively.

Develop and execute hands-on attacks against AI systems, including:

Direct prompt injection and jailbreaks that bypass system prompts, safety instructions, and alignment.

Indirect (cross-domain) prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious instructions are hidden in untrusted content the model consumes: documents, web pages, emails, tickets, code, and RAG sources.

Multi-turn, crescendo, and social-engineering style attacks that steer a model toward unsafe behavior over a conversation.

Multimodal injection through images, audio, and files that carry hidden instructions.

Guardrail, content filter, and safety-system bypass, including encoding, obfuscation, and adversarial phrasing.

Sensitive data exfiltration and leakage, including system prompt and grounding-data disclosure and cross-tenant or cross-session leakage.

Agentic and tool-use abuse: excessive agency, confused-deputy attacks, unsafe autonomous actions, and manipulation of tools, plugins, and connected systems.

Data and model attacks: training-data and RAG poisoning, model extraction, model inversion, membership inference, and adversarial examples / evasion.

Build scalable AI red teaming tooling and automation (custom attack harnesses and evaluation frameworks) to generate attack variations, run large evaluations, and continuously test AI systems as they change.

Partner with product, engineering, Responsible AI, and detection teams to translate findings into mitigations: better system prompts, input and output filters, grounding controls, agent guardrails, and detections.

Evaluate the effectiveness of AI defenses (detections, safety classifiers, filters, and monitoring) and provide strategic recommendations to close gaps.

Conduct deep research into emerging AI attacker techniques and map them to frameworks such as MITRE ATLAS and the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications.

Deliver executive-level briefings, technical reports, and prioritized, actionable recommendations.

Act as a technical leader: shape AI simulation methodology, mentor team members, and drive long-term innovation in Security for AI.

Qualifications

Minimum 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 4+ 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 6+ 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 background and 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 5+ 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 8+ 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 12+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection.
OR equivalent experience.

A security background: experience finding and exploiting real vulnerabilities (for example penetration testing, red teaming, vulnerability research, or application security), with an adversarial mindset.
Solid, practical understanding of how modern AI works: LLMs, prompting, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), fine-tuning, and agentic / tool-using systems.
Hands-on experience and familiarity with agentic AI systems, red teaming harnesses, and AI tooling: building or working with agents, tool-using LLMs, orchestration and evaluation frameworks, LLM APIs, and attack harnesses.
Demonstrated hands-on experience attacking AI systems: prompt injection (direct and indirect), jailbreaks, guardrail bypass, data exfiltration, or agent abuse, in research or professional settings.
Python skills for building attack automation, evaluation harnesses, and research tooling.
Familiarity with AI security and safety frameworks such as MITRE ATLAS, OWASP Top 10 for LLMs and Responsible AI principles.
Ability to translate offensive findings into practical defenses and to communicate clearly with both engineers and executives.
Contributions to AI security research, publications, CTFs, or open-source AI red teaming tooling.

#MSsecurity

Security Research IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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.