Security Research, Intern

About the Role

Illumio is seeking a curious and motivated Security Research Intern to join the Office of the CTO and Security's Threat Research team. This is a 12-week internship program focused on investigating real-world cyber threats, understanding attacker methodologies, and translating research into improved security capabilities. The internship emphasizes hands-on work at the intersection of threat research, threat intelligence, security telemetry, and data analysis, with opportunities to explore emerging technologies like AI and ML.

Location: Sunnyvale, CA Headquarters (4 on-site days per week)

Program Start Dates: May 24th, 2027 or June 21st, 2027

Key Responsibilities

• Research emerging threats, vulnerabilities, attacker campaigns, and evolving adversary techniques.
• Analyze threat intelligence including malicious IP addresses, domains, attacker infrastructure, and adversary behaviors.
• Investigate network activity associated with command-and-control, suspicious communications, and other potentially malicious behavior.
• Analyze security and network telemetry to identify patterns distinguishing normal from suspicious activity.
• Explore machine learning and statistical techniques for security use cases such as anomaly detection, behavioral analysis, clustering, and classification.
• Experiment with ML models and detection approaches, evaluating their effectiveness, limitations, and potential false positives.
• Help build and curate structured datasets connecting threats, campaigns, indicators, vulnerabilities, and attacker techniques.
• Explore how threat intelligence and security telemetry can be combined to develop new detection ideas.
• Collaborate with threat researchers, data scientists, engineers, and product teams to communicate findings and potential security improvements.
• Present research, experiments, and key learnings at the end of the internship.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Currently enrolled in a full-time Bachelor’s or Master’s degree program in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Data Science, or a related technical field with an expected graduation date in Winter 2027/Spring 2028.
• Strong interest in cybersecurity, security research, threat intelligence, or machine learning.
• Exposure to threat intelligence concepts such as IOCs, attacker campaigns, malware, vulnerabilities, or MITRE ATT&CK.
• Basic understanding of networking concepts and protocols such as TCP/IP, DNS, and HTTP/HTTPS.
• Familiarity with Python, SQL/KQL, notebooks, or similar programming and data-analysis tools, with an interest in analyzing security and network telemetry.
• Ability to research technical topics and clearly communicate findings.
• Curiosity about how attackers operate and how their behaviors can be detected.

Qualifications (Nice to Have)

• Experience working with network or security telemetry, logs, or large datasets.
• Familiarity with Python data analysis tools such as pandas or NumPy.
• Basic understanding of machine learning or statistical techniques, such as classification, clustering, or anomaly detection.
• Experience experimenting with ML libraries such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, or similar frameworks.
• Interest in applying machine learning to cybersecurity problems such as behavioral analysis or threat detection.
• Participation in CTFs, security competitions, academic research, open-source projects, or personal security projects.

Note: Candidates are not expected to be experts. Strong technical fundamentals, curiosity, and eagerness to learn are valued. Coursework, research projects, CTFs, ML projects, open-source contributions, or independent security research can demonstrate relevant experience.

What You’ll Gain

• Practical experience in security research, threat intelligence, and adversary analysis.
• Deeper understanding of network security, security telemetry, and threat detection.
• Learn to investigate emerging threats and translate research into detection and product ideas.
• Exposure to emerging approaches, including machine learning and data-driven security techniques.
• Work alongside experienced threat researchers and learn about real-world security research operations.

Intern Support

• Stipend.
• Events & Experiences to connect with peers and experience company culture.
• Opportunities to volunteer and make an impact in the community.
• Meals & Snacks, including catered lunch daily.

Note: Candidates must have valid U.S. work authorization for the full internship duration. Illumio does not provide immigration sponsorship for internships, but eligible F-1 students with CPT/OPT may be considered.