Sr. AI Threat Researcher

Role Summary

The X Ops Insights team sits inside the Security organization, reporting to the CISO. As threat actors become more organized and AI reshapes the security landscape, we need a senior researcher who can operate at the intersection of applied AI, threat intelligence, and cyber operations-someone who can both advance what we know and change how we work. This is a senior individual contributor role for a researcher who lives at the frontier of AI and cybersecurity. Your primary mission is to research how threat actors are adopting, weaponizing, and exploiting AI; from LLM powered social engineering and automated vulnerability discovery to real world attacks against agentic AI implementations. You'll help instrument telemetry to detect adversarial use of AI in the wild, assess emerging risks as AI capabilities evolve, and produce research that keeps Sophos and the broader security community ahead of the curve. As a domain expert in AI threats, you'll also be expected to help drive operational efficiencies across the Insights team, bringing the tools and techniques you research into our own workflows. You'll report to the Sr. Manager, Threat Research and work alongside CTU researchers, SophosLabs malware analysts, MDR threat hunters, incident responders, engineering teams, and data scientists.

What You Will Do Research & Analysis

• Investigate how threat actors are leveraging AI across the attack lifecycle, including AI assisted social engineering, AI generated malware, automated reconnaissance, and adversarial attacks against ML based defenses.
• Research real world threats to agentic AI systems, AI supply chains, and enterprise AI deployments, assessing risk and developing detection strategies.
• Help instrument and tune telemetry to identify indicators of AI driven attacker behavior at scale.
• Analyze global telemetry, case data, and OSINT to surface emerging AI related threat trends and early warning indicators.

Automation & Efficiency

• As a practitioner of the technology you research, identify opportunities to automate repetitive research and reporting workflows using LLMs, scripting, and internal tooling.
• Help the team evolve its operating model as new AI capabilities become available.

Cross Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with CTU researchers, SophosLabs analysts, MDR threat hunters, data scientists, and engineering teams to synthesize findings into unique reporting with actionable intelligence.
• Contribute to the joint task force intelligence cycle, ensuring insights flow rapidly into protections, detection rules, and operational systems.

Content & Publication

• Produce high quality written intelligence outputs, including deep dive research, rapid analyses, and strategic forecasting.
• Author work that is suitable for external publication via Sophos blogs, industry reports, and conference presentations.
• Present findings to internal stakeholders, external partners, and the broader security community.

What You Will Bring Required Qualifications

• Ability to interpret data from diverse telemetry sources and transform it into actionable intelligence.
• Exceptional written communication skills suitable for both technical and executive audiences.
• Demonstrated experience in at least two of the following: threat intelligence, malware analysis, detection engineering, or AI/ML research.
• Strong knowledge of threat actor ecosystems, modern attack techniques, and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
• Hands on proficiency with Python and modern AI development patterns, including building and orchestrating multi agent systems, working with LLM APIs, and designing agentic workflows with sub agents, tool use, and retrieval augmented generation.
• Experience building or using automation tools to streamline analytical or reporting workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in MDR, incident response, or real time security operations environments.
• Prior authorship of externally published threat research (blogs, reports, conference presentations).
• Experience with LLMs, prompt engineering, or building AI assisted analytical tools.
• Familiarity with large scale telemetry pipelines, security data lakes, or SIEM/SOAR platforms.

Remote First Working Model

Sophos operates a remote first working model, making remote work the primary option for most employees. While some roles may necessitate a hybrid approach, applicants must have legal authorization to work in the jurisdiction where the position is posted, without requiring employer sponsorship.

Our Commitment to You

We're proud of the diverse and inclusive environment we have at Sophos, and we're committed to ensuring equality of opportunity. We believe that diversity, combined with excellence, builds a better Sophos, so we encourage applicants who can contribute to the diversity of our team. All applicants will be treated in a fair and equal manner and in accordance with the law regardless of gender, sex, gender reassignment, marital status, race, religion or belief, color, age, military veteran status, disability, pregnancy, maternity or sexual orientation. We want to give you every opportunity to show us your best self, so if there are any adjustments we could make to the recruitment and selection process to support you, please let us know.

Data Protection

If you choose to explore an opportunity, and subsequently share your CV or other personal details with Sophos, these details will be held by Sophos for 12 months in accordance with our Privacy Policy and used by our recruitment team to contact you regarding this or other relevant opportunities at Sophos. If you would like Sophos to delete or update your details at any time, please follow the steps set out in the Privacy Policy describing your individual rights. For more information on Sophos' data protection practices, please consult our Privacy Policy. .