About the Position:The Senior Manager, Adversary Research leads a team responsible for discovering, tracking, and explaining sophisticated cyber threats. This leader will define the team’s research strategy, direct complex technical investigations, and ensure findings translate into actionable intelligence, durable detections, stronger security outcomes, and authoritative reporting. This position reports to the Director, Adversary Operations.
The ideal candidate combines strong people leadership with deep experience in adversary research and cyber threat intelligence. They can guide investigations across endpoint, network, malware, infrastructure, and open-source data while communicating complex findings to technical teams, executives, customers, and the broader security community.
What You Will Do
- Define the strategy, priorities, and operating model for the Adversary Research team.
- Lead, coach, and develop experienced threat researchers, intelligence analysts, and technical specialists.
- Direct research into nation-state groups, cybercriminal organizations, ransomware operations, malware campaigns, and emerging adversary tradecraft.
- Oversee proactive hunting across large-scale telemetry to identify previously unknown campaigns, infrastructure, malware, and behavioral patterns.
- Establish rigorous standards for actor tracking, campaign clustering, attribution, analytical confidence, and intelligence production.
- Guide advanced malware analysis, threat hunting, infrastructure tracking, and the development of YARA, Sigma, behavioral detections, and research tooling.
- Partner with threat hunting, incident response, detection engineering, security operations, product, and vulnerability research teams to operationalize findings.
- Direct the production of tactical, operational, and strategic intelligence for technical, executive, customer, and public audiences.
- Brief senior leaders and customers on emerging threats, adversary activity, and research outcomes.
- Build relationships with industry peers, government partners, intelligence-sharing communities, and external researchers.
What You Need to Succeed
- 12 or more years of experience in cyber threat intelligence, adversary research, threat hunting, malware analysis, incident response, or a related discipline.
- Three or more years of experience leading people, research programs, or multidisciplinary technical teams.
- Demonstrated success building or maturing a threat intelligence, adversary research, or related security function.
- Deep understanding of the intelligence lifecycle, intelligence requirements, collection management, all-source analysis, and structured analytic techniques.
- Strong knowledge of nation-state, cybercriminal, ransomware, initial-access, and malware ecosystems.
- Experience analyzing endpoint, network, cloud, identity, infrastructure, malware, and open-source data.
- Experience using frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and the Diamond Model to analyze adversary behavior and intrusion activity.
- Experience translating threat intelligence into detections, hunting strategies, incident response actions, defensive controls, or product improvements.
- Familiarity with YARA, Sigma, SIEM, EDR, SOAR, threat intelligence platforms, and large-scale data-analysis environments.
- Very strong written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting to technical and executive audiences.
- Proven track record of authoring, reviewing, and guiding publication-quality threat research with the ability to strengthen analytic rigor, technical accuracy, and narrative clarity.
- Sound judgment when handling sensitive intelligence, uncertain attribution, customer information, and high-impact security events.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience managing senior researchers across malware analysis, threat hunting, intelligence analysis, or detection engineering.
- Working knowledge of reverse-engineering tools such as IDA Pro, Ghidra, or x64dbg.
- Experience using Python, SQL, or similar languages for research automation and large-scale analysis.
- Experience building actor-tracking programs, campaign repositories, intelligence requirements, or research metrics.
- Experience supporting high-severity incident response or proactive threat-hunting engagements.
- Experience publishing original security research or presenting at industry conferences.
- Knowledge of the geopolitical factors influencing state-directed cyber operations.
What Success Looks Like
- A focused research strategy aligned with customer and organizational priorities.
- Consistent, defensible standards for actor tracking, attribution, and analytical confidence.
- Original research that produces resilient detections, hunting capabilities, product improvements, or customer protections.
- Strong collaboration across research, detection, incident response, and product teams.
- A high-performing team with clear development opportunities and measurable impact.
On-Camera Policy
To support a fair, transparent, and engaging interview experience, candidates interviewing remotely are expected to be on camera during all video interviews. Being on camera fosters authentic connection, improves communication, and allows for full engagement from both candidates and interviewers. We understand that technical, bandwidth, or location-related challenges may occasionally prevent video use. If this applies, candidates are required to notify us in advance so we can explore appropriate accommodations.
BenefitsAll wolves receive compelling compensation and benefits packages, including:
- Equity for all employees
- Flexible time off and paid volunteer days
- 401(k) contribution and matching
- Training and career development programs
- Comprehensive private benefits plan including medical, mental health, dental, disability, life and AD&D, and value-added services
- Robust Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with mental health services
- Fertility support and paid parental leave
Security Requirements
At Arctic Wolf, protecting our people, customers, and data is fundamental to how we operate. All employees are expected to uphold our commitment to security, privacy, and compliance by following internal information security policies, standards, and controls designed to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of business, customer, employee, and other confidential information and to support compliance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
Depending on the role and where permitted by applicable law, employment may be subject to background verification and additional regulatory, security, or compliance requirements, including obligations related to data protection and export control laws, and authorization requirements where applicable.
Base SalaryThe base salary range for this job family is 104,500 to 259,000 USD annually. This range reflects the base pay the company reasonably expects to offer for this position, aligned to the broader job family base pay structure. Actual base pay may vary based on skills, experience, and location, including job family level. In addition to base pay, Arctic Wolf offers variable incentive compensation, new hire equity grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.
Your next big opportunity starts here 6 apply today and help us end cyber risk. 
