Director, Threat Research

Illumio is the leader in ransomware and breach containment, redefining how organizations contain cyberattacks and enable operational resilience. Powered by the Illumio AI Security Graph, our breach containment platform identifies and contains threats across hybrid multi-cloud environments – stopping the spread of attacks before they become disasters.

Recognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave™ for Microsegmentation, Illumio enables Zero Trust, strengthening cyber resilience for the infrastructure, systems, and organizations that keep the world running.

At Illumio, we’re pioneering cybersecurity innovation with our Illumio Insights platform, which leverages a dynamic security graph built from network flows, workload inventories, identity data, threat data, and vulnerability data. This graph enables essential functions such as breach risk detection, network segmentation assessment, active breach identification, and intelligent policy recommendations. To accelerate our product evolution and establish market-leading threat intelligence capabilities, we’re building a world-class, data-driven Threat Research function.

• Personally analyze large-scale security datasets to uncover attacker behaviors, TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), emerging risks, and misconfigurations.

• Leverage the security graph to model attack paths, recommend segmentation strategies that reduce the risk of lateral movement, and identify opportunities for stronger breach containment.

• Map findings to MITRE ATT&CK and real-world adversary tradecraft; develop and validate hypotheses about evolving threats.

• Create internal threat models and risk frameworks that directly inform detection logic, data enrichment, graph quality, and policy recommendations.

• Partner closely with Product Management and Engineering to translate research into concrete enhancements: improved detection algorithms, data tagging, analytics, and customer-facing risk insights.

• Collaborate with Customer Success, Field teams, and executives to communicate emerging threats observed in aggregate data and their implications for segmentation strategy.

• Influence product roadmap decisions and help position Illumio Insights as the industry benchmark for proactive threat-informed security.

• Hire, mentor, and grow a high-performing Threat Research team over time.

• Evolve the function from internal product-focused research into broader external thought leadership (publications, conference talks, industry reports).

• Foster a culture of curiosity, rigor, and impact-driven research.

• 10+ years of experience in threat research, detection engineering, incident response, or threat intelligence, with a proven track record of hands-on technical work.

• Prior experience as a manager or senior individual contributor who has successfully built or scaled a threat research capability from scratch.

• Deep expertise in attacker tradecraft, real-world TTP mapping (MITRE ATT&CK), IOC analysis, and incident response processes.

• Strong experience working directly with Product and Engineering teams in a security product company or vendor environment.

• Demonstrated ability to analyze security telemetry and translate complex findings into product improvements and business-relevant insights.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive briefing experience.

• Background in graph-based analytics, security graphs, or network segmentation/zero-trust environments.

• Hands-on experience with large-scale telemetry analysis and detection engineering.

• Familiarity with data science or ML techniques applied to threat detection.
  Track record of publishing threat research or speaking at industry conferences.

• Previous leadership role at a cybersecurity product company (endpoint, network security, or analytics-focused vendor).

• Experience integrating external threat intelligence and vulnerability data into product features.

• Public thought leadership portfolio (blogs, reports, talks, or open-source contributions).

• A researcher at heart who thrives on diving into raw data to uncover hidden patterns and real-world attacker behaviors.

• A pragmatic builder who can deliver immediate product value while simultaneously designing a scalable, world-class function.

• Equally comfortable in deep technical analysis and high-level executive or customer conversations.

• A collaborative leader excited to turn cutting-edge threat research into measurable product differentiation and customer protection.

• Passionate about bridging real-world threats with innovative security graph technology to stay ahead of adversaries.

#LI-PO1 #LI-ONSITE

Illumio believes that an environment of unique backgrounds, experiences, viewpoints, and individual contributions creates a culture of belonging, drives our future, and makes us stronger together in support of our customers and their success.

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