Security Research Engineer - Detection Engineering
Harness
Key Responsibilities
- Develop, optimize, and maintain detection rules and signatures for all detection and edge defences.
- Develop context-enriched detections by leveraging user behavior analytics, traffic fingerprints, and API interaction context.
- Build and enhance Bot detection logic, identifying automated threats such as credential stuffing, scraping, API abuse, and fraud automation.
- Create correlation logic that combines multiple weak indicators (behavioral, request, session, and IP signals) into high-confidence detections.
- Research, design, and codify detections for the OWASP Top 10, OWASP API Top 10, and bot-driven attack vectors.
- Analyze large-scale security event telemetry to identify detection gaps, optimize existing rules, and reduce false positives.
- Collaborate with Engineering and Data Science teams to operationalize detection intelligence into Traceable’s engines.
- Continuously tune and validate detection rulesets based on real-world traffic, diverse customer environments, and evolving attacker behaviors.
- Build automation pipelines and validation frameworks to test detection logic and correlation performance.
- Investigate false positive/negative trends, and contribute to detection precision metrics.
- Analyze CVEs and emerging vulnerabilities, build proactive defenses, and publish research blogs or advisories based on findings.
- Contribute to product-level improvements by feeding back research insights into feature design and detection capabilities.
Required Skills & Experience
- 1 - 4 years of experience in security research, detection engineering.
- Strong background in WAF/WAAP detection, Bot detection.
- Hands-on experience writing rule logic:
- Coreruleset experience
- Deep understanding of regex
- Deep understanding of HTTP, API protocols, and common web attack payloads (XSS, SQLi, SSRF, Command Injection, Deserialization, etc.).
- Deep understanding of API Attack methodologies including OWASP API Top 10.
- Knowledge of GraphQL, gRPC and other protocols.
- Working knowledge of Bot behavior analysis, traffic fingerprinting, anti-automation, and CAPTCHA evasion tactics.
- Strong analytical ability to review false positives/negatives, perform event triage, and fine-tune detection coverage.
- Familiarity with API abuse detection, authentication attacks, and session-based correlation logic.
- Experience leveraging machine learning models or heuristic scoring for anomaly detection.
- Experience with writing signatures for any product.
- Experience building or tuning detection for OWASP Top 10 and API Top 10 categories.
- Understanding of alert workflows, and signal correlations.
- Proficiency in Java and Python for prototyping and automating rule validation workflows.
- Excellent communication, documentation, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Nice to Have
- Contributions to open-source security projects, especially those related to the OWASP Top 10 or OWASP API Top 10.
- Experience developing custom WAF/WAAP rule engines, threat classifiers, or signal correlation pipelines.
- Background in API security, runtime protection, or detection engineering at scale.
- Authored publications, technical blogs, or delivered conference talks.
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All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
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Please note, we do not ask for sensitive or financial information via chat, text, or social media, and any email communications will come from the domain @harness.io. Additionally, Harness will never ask for any payment, fee to be paid, or purchases to be made by a job applicant. All applicants are encouraged to apply directly to our open jobs via our website. Interviews are generally conducted via Zoom video conference unless the candidate requests other accommodations.
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