Staff Backend Engineer, Internal

The role

You will set technical direction for backend systems that power NodeZero's internal pentesting capabilities. You will lead high-impact work across services, data pathways, ETL pipelines, and APIs.

What you will do

• Set the architecture and technical direction for core Python services and APIs
• Lead complex backend initiatives from design through delivery and production operation
• Design and evolve reliable processing workflows for large-scale data workloads
• Shape processing and data-access patterns to scale across concurrent workloads
• Lead the design and operation of high-throughput ETL pipelines
• Guide the attack-path data model and presentation layer
• Optimize raw SQL and identify performance risks
• Define and evolve GraphQL and graph-based API patterns
• Own the operational health of the backend systems
• Mentor and unblock engineers through design discussions and code reviews

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience using modern object-oriented or functional languages (Python, Java, Go, Scala, C++, TypeScript, etc.)
• Demonstrated technical leadership on high-complexity backend or data-platform initiatives
• Experience designing, building, and operating production data-processing, ETL, or distributed task-processing systems at scale
• Hands-on experience with backend APIs, relational data models, and SQL in production systems
• Experience building applications on cloud computing platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP
• Experience using container technologies such as Docker

Nice to have

• Deep experience shaping cross-team backend architecture
• Ability to rewrite slow queries to change runtime by an order of magnitude
• Experience building ETL that runs unattended against messy, real-world source data
• Fluency with the modern Python toolchain including SQLAlchemy, uv, ruff, mypy, and pytest
• Experience designing durable, observable data workflows with orchestration engines such as Temporal, Prefect, Airflow, or Celery
• Deep experience with GraphQL backends and with graph databases such as Neo4j
• Track record of owning observability for what you ship (Datadog, Prometheus, or OpenTelemetry)
• Systems engineering experience with attack-path data, relational datasets, and security services
• Experience deploying containerized services in Kubernetes-based production environments
• Experience building platform capabilities or internal tooling

Benefits

• Equity package in the form of stock options
• Health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family
• Flexible vacation policy
• Generous parental leave

About the company

Horizon3.ai is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find, fix and verify exploitable attack vectors. The team is a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers, and cybersecurity practitioners.