Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI.
What Is The Role :
As a Principal Threat Hunting and Emulation Engineer at Elastic, you are at the forefront of proactively defending Elastic’s products, services, and people. This is not a reactive role—you will lead structured, hypothesis-driven hunts across Elastic’s global environment to uncover threats that evade automated detection. You will design and execute adversary emulation exercises to stress-test our detection pipelines, validate coverage, and drive continuous improvement. You’ll partner deeply with Detection Engineering, Incident Response, and Threat Intelligence to ensure that what we hunt for translates directly into durable detections and hardened defenses.
You are a practitioner first. You think like an adversary, operate like an analyst, and build like an engineer. If combining structured threat hunting frameworks, AI-assisted analysis, and real-world adversary emulation in a best-in-class security environment excites you, we’d love to meet you!
What You Will Be Doing :
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Lead structured, hypothesis-driven threat hunting operations across Elastic’s cloud, SaaS, endpoint, and CI/CD environments using frameworks such as PEAK, TaHiTI, or equivalent.
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Develop and maintain a threat hunting program at scale. Defining hunt hypotheses based on threat intelligence, ATT&CK mappings, and environmental risk profiles.
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Design and execute adversary emulation exercises and purple team engagements to validate detection pipelines, identify coverage gaps, and simulate real-world threat actor TTPs.
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Build and maintain a threat emulation library of reusable attack simulations, leveraging tools such as Atomic Red Team, Caldera, Scythe, or custom-developed tooling.
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Leverage AI and machine learning capabilities to accelerate hypothesis generation, anomaly detection, and the analysis of large, complex datasets during hunts.
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Translate hunt findings into production-ready detections, collaborating closely with Detection Engineering to ensure durable coverage.
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Document and codify hunt methodologies, playbooks, and emulation plans so that findings are repeatable, reviewable, and transferable.
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Partner with Threat Intelligence to inform hunt hypotheses based on emerging adversary campaigns, newly disclosed vulnerabilities, and sector-specific threat profiles.
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Identify visibility gaps exposed through hunting and emulation, and collaborate with Security Engineering to onboard the log sources needed to close them.
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Support incident response activities by applying hunting skills to accelerate investigation, scope incidents, and identify attacker dwell time or lateral movement.
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Contribute to the broader security community through blog posts, conference talks, open-source tooling, and other public knowledge sharing.
What You Bring :
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At least 8 years of experience in information security with a focus on threat hunting, detection engineering, incident response, or red/purple team operations with the Elastic Stack.
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Demonstrated experience in conducting structured and hypothesis-driven threat hunts in complex enterprise or cloud-native environments. The focus is on forward-thinking threat hunting, not just reactive investigation.
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Familiarity with threat hunting frameworks such as PEAK, TaHiTI, or Sqrrl, and the ability to apply them operationally and at scale.
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Experience designing and executing adversary emulation exercises or purple team engagements, including scoping, execution, and post-exercise reporting.
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Working knowledge of adversary TTPs through frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK, and the ability to map real-world threat intelligence to hunt hypotheses.
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Experience using AI-assisted tooling or large language models to support threat hunting workflows, such as hypothesis generation, log summarization, or anomaly triage.
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Scripting or coding ability to automate repetitive hunt tasks or build custom tooling.
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A curious, research-driven mindset. You read threat reports, study malware, and seek to understand attacker behavior at a deep level.
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Strong written communication skills with an ability to document technical findings clearly for both technical and executive audiences.
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Is eligible to work in Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level 4 or above cloud service environments.
Bonus Points :
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Background in both detection engineering and incident response—understanding how hunts feed detections and how incidents inform future hunts.
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Experience threat hunting in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).
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Familiarity with CI/CD and developer supply chain threat hunting (GitHub Actions, code pipeline integrity, dependency confusion, etc.).
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Contributions to open-source threat hunting or detection engineering projects, or public threat research publications.
Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary. This role does not have a variable compensation component.
The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is listed below. In select locations (including Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area), an alternate range may apply as specified below.
These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future.
An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs.
Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock program. Our total rewards package also includes a company-matched 401k with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 6% of eligible earnings, along with a range of other benefits offered with a holistic emphasis on employee well-being.
The typical starting salary range for this role is:
$159,800—$252,800 USD
The typical starting salary range for this role in the select locations listed above is:
$191,900—$303,500 USD
Additional Information - We Take Care of Our People
As a distributed company, diversity drives our identity. Whether you’re looking to launch a new career or grow an existing one, Elastic is the type of company where you can balance great work with great life. Your age is only a number. It doesn’t matter if you’re just out of college or your children are; we need you for what you can do.
We strive to have parity of benefits across regions and while regulations differ from place to place, we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to do.
- Competitive pay based on the work you do here and not your previous salary
- Health coverage for you and your family in many locations
- Ability to craft your calendar with flexible locations and schedules for many roles
- Generous number of vacation days each year
- Increase your impact - We match up to $2000 (or local currency equivalent) for financial donations and service
- Up to 40 hours each year to use toward volunteer projects you love
- Embracing parenthood with minimum of 16 weeks of parental leave
Different people approach problems differently. We need that. Elastic is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law, ordinance or regulation.
We welcome individuals with disabilities and strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all individuals. To request an accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email candidate_accessibility@elastic.co We will reply to your request within 24 business hours of submission.
Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws, view posters linked below: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Poster; Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision Poster; Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) Poster and Know Your Rights (Poster)
Elasticsearch develops and distributes encryption software and technology that is subject to U.S. export controls and licensing requirements for individuals who are located in or are nationals of the following sanctioned countries and regions: Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, the Crimea Region of Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic (“DNR”), and the Luhansk People’s Republic (“LNR”). If you are located in or are a national of one of the listed countries or regions, an export license may be required as a condition of your employment in this role. Please note that national origin and/or nationality do not affect eligibility for employment with Elastic.
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