EU remote
Senior Detection Engineer
About this role
What does Spamhaus do? Spamhaus , together with its partner abuse.ch, strengthens trust and safety for the Internet. We extract intelligence from globally sourced signals that enable us to provide the community and clients with actionable and timely datasets to provide protection, insight and context to behaviour relating to internet resources. As the market leader in email blocklists (DNSBLs) for the past two decades, we are moving into the broader cyber threat intelligence market to leverage the breadth of signals and actionable intelligence we have on Internet activity.
Why work for Spamhaus ? We hire people who are passionate about our purpose and want to work in an organization where they will be stretched and have the opportunity to question and challenge. Self-motivated individuals looking for a non-corporate environment will enjoy our culture. We have a start-up mentality: we are extremely hardworking, ideas are welcome, and team members are expected to “get stuck in.” Our teams’ efforts make a difference, and their work really does "move the needle".
Established over 25 years ago (the same year as Google), Spamhaus is still 100% owned by its founder; we bring experience, expertise, and stability in a fluid marketplace. The Team: The Cyber Threat Intelligence Focus Unit (CTI FU) team members are located across Europe and work closely with our partner abuse.ch. The team is a small group of developers, product specialists and malware researchers, and this role is a key addition to it.
The team focuses on malware research and building features and functionality for our Cyber Threat Intelligence offering, the CTI Hunting Platform. This role may be required to work with and supervise interns and other more junior team members. We value strong communication and a fail-fast approach. If you enjoy collaborating openly, sharing your work regularly, and being part of a close-knit and supportive team, you’ll feel at home here.
Key responsibilities will include: Write, test, and maintain high-fidelity detection rules (such as YARA) with low false-positive rates, optimized for scalable deployment across continuous detection and retrohunt pipelines. Own the quality of detection rule sets, including rule verification, false-positive risk assessment and performance testing. Reverse engineer Windows and Linux malware, including emerging families, packers and obfuscated payloads, and identify opportunities for detection and intelligence extraction.