OverviewMicrosoft Security (MSEC) is seeking a Senior Security Engineer with deep domain expertise to build and operationalize security-first systems that enable safe and scalable AI adoption.
This role sits at the intersection of security engineering, AI systems, and enterprise readiness, focusing on transforming complex signals across identity, endpoints, data, applications, and infrastructure into actionable security insights, detections, and automated mitigation workflows.
You will design and build end-to-end security systems that detect, prioritize, and respond to risks in AI-enabled environments-bridging traditional security controls with emerging AI-native threat models (LLM abuse, prompt injection, data exfiltration, model misuse).
You will operate in a highly collaborative environment, driving execution from security signal ingestion and detection engineering to response automation and governance, helping customers achieve secure AI readiness at enterprise scale.
ResponsibilitiesSecurity Detection, Investigation & Response Systems
- Design and build detection pipelines across identity, endpoint, data, and application signals to uncover vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and active threats.
- Develop correlation engines and detection logic that combine multi-source telemetry into high-confidence security signals.
- Build and operationalize end-to-end detection validation prioritization remediation workflows.
- Implement automated incident response and remediation playbooks leveraging rule-based systems, workflows, and AI-assisted reasoning.
Security Systems & Platform Engineering
- Architect and build scalable security platforms and services that process high-volume enterprise telemetry.
- Develop data pipelines and distributed systems for ingestion, enrichment, and real-time analysis of security signals.
- Integrate security capabilities into APIs, services, and platform layers to enable reusable and extensible solutions.
- Ensure systems are designed for reliability, performance, isolation, and security by design.
Vulnerability Management & Risk Prioritization
- Build systems to discover and track vulnerabilities across cloud resources, identities, and application environments.
- Develop prioritization models that incorporate exploitability, impact, and business criticality.
- Enable workflows that drive end-to-end remediation closure, integrating with engineering systems and developer pipelines.
- Align with frameworks such as Defender, MDC, ASPM to enable holistic risk visibility and response.
Security for AI Systems (AI-Native Threat Protection)
- Define and implement controls for AI-specific threat vectors (prompt injection, data leakage, model abuse, adversarial inputs).
- Build detection and mitigation mechanisms for LLM-based systems, RAG pipelines, and agentic workflows.
- Embed security into AI system design, inference pipelines, and orchestration layers.
- Contribute to responsible AI practices, governance, and secure deployment patterns.
Data, Telemetry & Observability
- Build rich telemetry systems to track security posture, risk signals, and system performance.
- Develop analytics to measure detection effectiveness, false positives, and response outcomes.
- Leverage telemetry to enable continuous improvement loops across detection and response systems.
Cross-Company Collaboration & Impact
- Partner with Engineering, Product, Data Science, and Security teams to translate security problems into scalable engineering solutions.
- Work across a matrixed organization to align signals, platforms, and response workflows.
- Help define security readiness standards and onboarding playbooks for enterprise AI adoption.
Technical Leadership & Engineering Excellence
- Lead design and delivery of complex, large-scale security systems from concept to production.
- Establish best practices for secure coding, system design, reliability, and governance.
- Drive data-driven and evidence-based decision-making across security engineering initiatives.
- Mentor engineers and elevate the organizations security engineering maturity.
QualificationsRequired Qualifications:
- Bachelors Degree AND 6+ years of experience in security engineering, software engineering, or distributed systems.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Strong experience building production-grade security systems (detections, pipelines, or platforms).
- Deep understanding of security domains such as identity, cloud security, endpoint security, or data protection.
- Strong programming skills (e.g., Python, C#, or Java) for system design, automation, and pipeline development.
- Experience building and operating distributed systems and large-scale data pipelines.
Preferred
- 8+ years of experience in security engineering and large-scale system design.
- Experience with security detection engineering, threat modeling, and incident response systems.
- Familiarity with AI/ML systems and their security implications (LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows).
- Expertise in cloud security platforms (Azure preferred) and enterprise-scale environments.
- Experience with security telemetry platforms, SIEM systems, or data lakes.
- Proven ability to operate in ambiguous, cross-org environments and deliver end-to-end systems.
- Strong ability to communicate complex security and system concepts to technical and executive stakeholders.
Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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.
