Job Description

Senior Data Scientist – Adversarial Response Team

Join our Global Web Security team

Our team is part of Akamai’s Application Security organization, building technologies that power our security products and protect some of the world’s largest digital brands.The Adversarial Response Team applies advanced data science and threat analysis to strengthen Akamai’s Bot Manager Premier, Account Protector, and Content Protector products. We analyze complex attack traffic and emerging attack techniques to improve detection accuracy while minimizing false positives and driving product innovation.

Partner with the best

As a Senior Data Scientist, you will lead complex security investigations, analyze large-scale traffic data, develop targeted detection improvements, and identify recurring patterns that influence our long-term product strategy.You will also act as a technical bridge between customer-facing teams, security operations, and the core data science research group.

In this role, you will

• Investigate complex false-positive, false-negative, and product escalations.
• Analyze traffic patterns, behavioral signals, request signatures, and security telemetry.
• Identify root causes and develop targeted fixes through rule tuning, threshold changes, and feature improvements.
• Analyze historical cases to identify recurring detection gaps and emerging attack patterns.
• Develop new detections for unmitigated or evolving threats.
• Document findings and create clear research tickets for unresolved issues.

• Partner with Professional Services, security operations, account teams, and data science teams.

• To be successful in this role, you will
• Have 8+ years of relevant experience with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Have strong experience working with large datasets using Python and SQL; experience with Go is a plus.
• Have a solid understanding of statistics, probability, data analysis, machine learning, and clustering techniques.
• Demonstrate strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills.
• Have experience in bot detection, fraud prevention, account takeover, scraping detection, or application security.
• Understand HTTP, TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/SSL, and web application architectures.
• Communicate technical findings clearly and work effectively across teams.

Work in a way that works for you

FlexBase, Akamai’s Global Flexible Working Program, is based on the principles that are helping us create the best workplace in the world. When our colleagues said that flexible working was important to them, we listened. We also know flexible working is important to many of the incredible people considering joining Akamai. FlexBase, gives 95% of employees the choice to work from their home, their office, or both (in the country advertised). This permanent workplace flexibility program is consistent and fair globally, to help us find incredible talent, virtually anywhere. We are happy to discuss working options for this role and encourage you to speak with your recruiter in more detail when you apply.