Job Description

Overview

MCAPS-Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market.

The Customer & Commercial Success (CCS) organization, an organization within MCAPS-Core, is the connected engine that turns Microsoft’s commercial strategy into execution at scale — making it simpler and faster for the field to win for every customer, in every segment, region, and role. The organization brings together planning, landing, execution excellence, services portfolio and delivery, and field activation across ATU, STU, and CSU to accelerate customer value, drive growth, and strengthen the end-to-end experience across every customer moment.

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft products, services and partnerships.

Microsoft's Detection and Response Team (DART) is seeking a skilled and experienced Cybersecurity Lead Investigator to join the team in United States. DART is the first port of call for many customers during a security incident. This pivotal, customer-facing position leads investigation direction, establishes technical priorities and helps customers make evidence-led response decisions.

In this role, you will be required to work shift assignments during non-standard business hours, Friday through Monday: 10-hour shift scheduled between 8:00AM - 6PM EDT, Weekends and Public Holidays. Substitute days off will be provided for public holiday work. Working hours may change based on business needs.

You will lead the investigation, establish technical priorities and act as the primary technical point of contact for customers, including executive stakeholders. Working with threat hunters, reverse engineers, infrastructure engineers and incident coordinators, you will align specialist workstreams and help customers understand findings, confidence, risk and response options.

As part of a globally distributed, mission-driven team, you will share research, mentor colleagues and help shape the future of Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident Response. Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Employees are expected to demonstrate a growth mindset, innovation, collaboration, respect, integrity, accountability and inclusion.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

As a Lead Investigator, you will orchestrate evidence-driven investigations and technical incident response, align specialist workstreams and communicate clear findings, priorities and recommendations to customers.

• Set investigation objectives, hypotheses, priorities and evidence requirements; lead hands-on analysis and specialist workstreams across enterprise on-premises and cloud environments.
• Contextualise and prioritise findings, correlate disparate evidence and build cohesive incident timelines. Establish what is known, what remains uncertain and what additional collection or analysis is needed.
• Assess adversary activity, compromise scope and potential data collection or exfiltration; validate key findings and explain the confidence and limitations of conclusions.
• Direct technical response planning and recommendations to secure enterprise environments, balancing containment and recovery urgency with evidence preservation and customer business constraints. Coordinate execution with customer-authorised teams.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for complex investigations; brief technical teams, executives, legal, compliance, engineering and other stakeholders with clear objectives, findings and decision options.
• Identify skill, access, telemetry and resource gaps early; work with incident coordinators and leadership to resolve dependencies, obtain specialist support and escalate delivery risks.
• Maintain investigative documentation and clear follow-the-sun handovers covering evidence, hypotheses, decisions, risks and next actions; support final reporting and lessons learned.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection

Other Requirements:

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check and any additional checks needed for customer or government work.
• In this role, you will be required to work shift assignments during non-standard business hours, Friday through Monday: 10-hour shift scheduled between 8:00AM - 6PM EDT, Weekends and Public Holidays. Substitute days off will be provided for public holiday work. Working hours may change based on business needs.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Computer Security, or related field AND 3+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large-scale computing, threat analysis or modeling, cybersecurity, vulnerability research, and/or anomaly detection
• Demonstrated hands-on experience leading large-scale, high-pressure cybersecurity incident response across on-premises and cloud environments, including setting investigation direction and guiding evidence-driven customer decisions.
• Ability to correlate and assess evidence from multiple sources, reconstruct incident timelines, evaluate compromise scope and possible exfiltration, and clearly explain findings and uncertainty.
• Experience directing response activities while balancing rapid recovery, technical dependencies and business impact.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical specialists and stakeholders, identify engagement gaps, request appropriate resources and manage investigations using a global follow-the-sun model.
• Proven customer-facing written and verbal communication, including executive briefings.
• Flexibility to work non-standard business hours that may include evening, nighttime, weekends and/or holidays.
• Experience analysing nation-state or cybercrime activity and applying adversary knowledge to complex enterprise investigations.
• Demonstrated research, analytical automation, data-quality improvement and technical mentoring that strengthen investigation capability.
• Experience developing reviewed technical publications, presentations or other knowledge-sharing material while protecting sensitive information.
• Experience leading globally distributed incident response workstreams with clear handovers, explicit ownership and effective customer communication.
• Relevant security certifications or equivalent practical expertise.

Security Research 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.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.