Anti-Spam / Anti-Malware Researcher

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Anti-Spam / Anti-Malware Researcher

IronPort Systems, a Cisco Business Unit, is looking for a results-oriented applied-researcher in the Security Applications Analysis Group. The Analysis Group is responsible for identifying and quantifying the impact of techniques for improving the efficacy of our email and web security applications. The Researcher will study spam and malware missed by existing techniques and apply disciplined analysis to identify new techniques for identifying spam and malware. Deliverables include research proposals, research documents describing a technique and quantitative measures of expected efficacy improvement, prototypes, functional specifications and ad-hoc measurement tools. As an applied researcher, the candidate should be comfortable engaging in healthy debate with team members and developing production code as required. Development will be on a UNIX-based platform primarily using Python or C as an implementation language.

Required Experience and Skills:

• 3+ years of applied research or development experience in email, web or network security or a related field
• Understanding of security, including email and/or web threats
• Experience turning research ideas into actionable designs
• Proficient with Unix and databases
• Working knowledge of Perl
• Facility with applied statistics or machine learning
• Advanced degree in a relevant field is desirable
• Professional experience developing any service-oriented software, especially with scaling, QOS and uptime requirements desired
• Relevant experience in reviewing designs, specifications, schedules, and resource estimates
• Cross functional skills: must be able to communicate other groups to agree on testing requirements, hardware specifications, deployment configurations, scheduling, etc.
• Comfortable working in a group with several ongoing concurrent projects.
• Must possess strong verbal, written, analytical, and persuasive skills, and the ability to communicate and interact with all members of the development team.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Characterize and quantify problems related to spam/malware not detected by existing technologies and new techniques being used to spread them
• Propose techniques to stop malware and spam and how the impact of these techniques should be measured
• Develop functional overviews and function specs summarizing the problem being addressed by a new system and its various components
• Publish research documents documenting the methodology and findings of a research project, including quantitative measures of expected efficacy improvement
• Develop and document prototypes to simulate the behavior of a new technique
• Design and monitor tools to measure a particular problem or the contribution of a particular technique over time
• Design and implement production code for projects as required
• Work closely with a cross functional team to design new features and resolve issues as they arise

Personal Characteristics:

“The Customer Comes First” Attitude: Candidate will demonstrate passionate commitment to the customer and to product quality. Champions the product and the customer’s needs and implements a model of continuous improvement in both company goals and project-related task.
“Practical, results-oriented focus”: Candidate must possess a keen instinct to discern the ideas likely to have the most measurable benefit to IronPort’s products from the many possible ideas out there and work closely with other members of the development team to execute them.

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For immediate consideration, please submit your resume here.