Principal Dark Web Collection Analyst

Recorded Future is the world’s most advanced and largest intelligence company, expanding its dark web collection capability focused on underground community intelligence. The Principal Dark Web Collection Analyst will serve as the internal authority on the dark web ecosystem, making strategic decisions about collection efforts and personally navigating underground infrastructure to extract intelligence.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as the company-wide subject matter expert on dark web and underground community dynamics, advising product, engineering, sales, and analyst teams
• Make and own strategic collection decisions: which forums, markets, and channels to pursue; which intelligence areas to prioritize; and where to explicitly not invest resources
• Identify, evaluate, and gain access to criminal forums, darknet marketplaces, Telegram channels, and adjacent covert infrastructure within legal and policy boundaries
• Develop and maintain collection strategies, personas, and source documentation to sustain access across a volatile source landscape
• Partner with engineering to translate research tradecraft into automated collection pipelines
• Monitor sources for operational changes — takedowns, migrations, rebrands — and continuously adapt
• Produce finished intelligence on key threat actors, community dynamics, and emerging underground infrastructure: actor profiles, source assessments, and analytical summaries
• Collaborate broadly across internal teams — product, PMM, sales, customer success, and research — as the go-to voice on underground community intelligence
• Represent Recorded Future externally: writing customer-facing blogs, presenting at webinars, and contributing to public research on dark web tactics and trends

Requirements:

• 5+ years of hands-on dark web threat research with demonstrable collection outcomes across forums, marketplaces, or covert channels
• Deep, current expertise in the structure and dynamics of major criminal forums and darknet markets — how they operate, how access is governed, and how actors and communities evolve
• Proven ability to operate within closed or invite-only communities while maintaining OPSEC and legal compliance
• Russian language proficiency at a professional working level — essential for this role
• Strong analytical writing skills — ability to produce concise, well-sourced intelligence products for both technical and executive audiences
• Comfort operating externally: presenting to customers, hosting webinars, and writing public-facing content with authority
• Additional language skills relevant to underground communities (Ukrainian, Romanian, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic)
• Background in cybercrime research, threat actor tracking, or law enforcement intelligence
• Prior experience at a threat intelligence vendor, CSIRT, law enforcement, or intelligence agency
• Basic scripting ability (Python) for data parsing and format conversion