Staff Threat Researcher

About Zscaler Zscaler accelerates digital transformation to ensure our customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. As an AI-forward enterprise, we are constantly pushing the envelope, leveraging the world’s largest security data lake to power our cloud-native Zero Trust Exchange platform. This innovation protects our customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. Here, impact in your role matters more than title and trust is built on results. We say, impact over activity. We seek innovators who actively use AI to amplify their impact and who thrive in an environment where we leverage intelligent systems to stay ahead of evolving threats. We believe in transparency and value constructive, honest debate—we’re focused on getting to the best ideas, faster. We build high-performing teams that can make an impact quickly and with high quality. To do this, we are building a culture of execution centered on customer obsession, collaboration, ownership, and accountability. We value high-impact, high-accountability with a sense of urgency where you’re enabled to do your best work and embrace your potential. If you’re driven by purpose, thrive on solving complex challenges, and want to be part of the team that’s helping to secure the AI age, we invite you to bring your talents to Zscaler and help shape the future of cybersecurity. Role We are looking for a Staff Threat Researcher to join our team. This is a Hybrid role, reporting to the leader in the Threat Detection Group in the ThreatLabz department. The Staff Threat Researcher will be primarily responsible for performing static and dynamic malware analysis, developing protections, and conducting reputation analysis on extracted IOCs. This role will also design threat research automation workflows and create testing and training datasets for ML models to ensure millions of global users on the Zscaler platform remain protected. What you’ll do (Role Expectations) - Conduct static and dynamic malware analysis to mitigate emerging threats, C2 frameworks, and malicious AI agents - Develop complex automation tools, prototypes, and detection signatures to integrate research findings into Zscaler products - Track the global threat landscape, identify attacker TTPs, and perform reputation analysis on extracted IOCs - Validate AI/ML model outputs and provide feedback to the engineering teams to enhance threat model efficacy - Contribute to the global security community by publishing in-depth threat analysis blogs and research papers Who You Are (Success Profile) - You thrive in ambiguity. You're comfortable building the path as you walk it. You thrive in a dynamic environment, seeing ambiguity not as a hindrance, but as the raw material to build something meaningful. - You act like an owner. Your passion for the mission fuels your bias for action. You operate with integrity because you genuinely care about the outcome. True ownership involves leveraging dynamic range: the ability to navigate seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution. - You are a problem-solver. You love running towards the challenges because you are laser-focused on finding the solution, knowing that solving the hard problems delivers the biggest impact. - You are a high-trust collaborator. You are ambitious for the team, not just yourself. You embrace our challenge culture by giving and receiving ongoing feedback—knowing that candor delivered with clarity and respect is the truest form of teamwork and the fastest way to earn trust. - You are a learner. You have a true growth mindset and are obsessed with your own development, actively seeking feedback to become a better partner and a stronger teammate. You love what you do and you do it with purpose. What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications) - Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a proven history of integrating new technologies to enhance daily workflows and augment problem-solving - Four to seven years of experience in the Cyber Security Research Domain with strong proficiency in reverse engineering and debugging tools such as IDA Pro or x64dbg - Deep understanding of Windows internals, web application security, malware categories, and network protocols across TCP/IP and OWASP frameworks - Proven experience creating detection signatures using IDS/IPS and YARA to track the threat landscape and identify attacker TTPs - Strong programming proficiency in Python, Shell, Perl, or Ruby to build and optimize custom automation tools What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications) - Experience designing and implementing AI-powered automation solutions or prompt engineering workflows to scale threat research capabilities and analyze malicious AI agents - Possession of AI, prompt engineering, or agenting AI workflow related certifications and familiarity with the MCP protocol - B