Principal Dark Web Collection Analyst

With 1,000+ intelligence professionals serving over 1,900 clients worldwide, Recorded Future is the world’s most advanced, and largest, intelligence company!

Recorded Future is expanding its dark web collection capability with a focus on underground community intelligence — criminal forums, illicit marketplaces, and covert messaging channels where threat actors recruit, collaborate, and transact.

You will be Recorded Future's internal authority on the dark web ecosystem — the person other teams turn to when they need to understand how underground communities operate, what's worth collecting, and where not to invest. This means making real strategic decisions: which forums warrant access efforts, which intelligence areas to prioritize, and which sources don't merit the operational cost. You will own that judgment and defend it across the organization. At the same time, this is a hands-on role. You will personally navigate underground infrastructure, build and maintain access, create and manage personas, and extract intelligence directly. The expert and the operator are the same person here.

What You'll Do:

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

What You'll Bring:

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

Preferred Qualifications:

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