Senior Backend Engineer, Data & App Platform
Horizon3 AI· startup· Cybersecurity· Aug 28, 2026 · 2mo ago
United States
Remote
Full-time
Senior
$170K–$235K
4+ years exp
Competition signal
- Found on LinkedIn · Over 200 applicants clicked apply
Job description
Get to Know Us
Horizon3 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 before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZeroTM platform, delivers production-safe autonomous pentests and other key assessment operations that scale across the largest internal, external, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. NodeZero has been adopted by organizations of all sizes, from small educational institutions to government agencies and Global 100 enterprises. It is used by IT Ops/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.
We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers & operators, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools and false positives, resulting in alert fatigue, blind spots, "checkbox” security culture, cybersecurity skills shortage, and the long lead time and expense of hiring outside consultants. Collectively, we are a team of learn it alls, committed to a culture of respect, collaboration, ownership, and results.
As a remote first company, we require minimum 25Mbps consumer grade broadband connection.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
The Pentest Data Platform (PDP) team owns the shared data platform that ingests NodeZero output from ephemeral operations and delivers it into durable storage, increasingly, in near real time. The team's core mandate is to build a scalable, event-driven architecture that makes operational insights available in near real-time, not just after it finishes.
PDP is a foundational, platform-oriented team whose outputs power core user experiences within the NodeZero security platform. PDP owns the data contracts and internal data services that everything else is built on top of.
NodeZero generates large volumes of structured pentest telemetry: hosts, findings, attack paths, credentials, weaknesses, and relationship graphs. PDP is responsible for turning that raw telemetry into coherent, durable, and queryable records that downstream teams can build on reliably at enterprise scale.
The team is driving the largest architectural change in Horizon3's history: reworking pentest data processing from a batch-centric monolith into a real-time, event-driven microservice architecture. There is existing code to understand, live customers to protect, and hard distributed-systems problems to solve, all at the same time.
In this role, you will:
- Own event-driven pipelines end to end — design, build, and operate streaming services that ingest, distribute, and process pentest operation results, including streaming and batch ETL, aggregation services, schema migrations, and replayable processing.
- Solve real-time asset identity problems — work on asset matching, asset counting, and cross-operation reconciliation, including reducing false splits and overcounting, improving matching explainability, and making asset identity available while an operation is running rather than only after completion.
- Evolve the data model — manage durable SQL-backed storage (PostgreSQL), drive schema evolution with zero-regression fidelity, and ensure data correctness, idempotency, and reliable reprocessing and failure handling.
- Drive enterprise scalability — own database performance, connection pooling, resource management, and platform reliability for a system that must handle hundreds of thousands of hosts per customer.
- Translate batch logic into streaming designs — convert batch business logic (finding enrichment, attack path analysis, host and identity correlation and other core requirements) into streaming designs without regressing fidelity for existing customers.
- Build and maintain shared platform infrastructure — contribute to common processing services that underpin features that enable customers to discover, prioritize, and report on weaknesses; support integration-test infrastructure including delta tracking and batch-transformation frameworks; build auto-discovery and code-generation tooling to accelerate new streaming service development.
- Own operational excellence — maintain ETL dashboards and data-platform monitors, participate in on-call rotations and incident response for production processing failures, manage stuck-operation workflows, define SLOs, and set up instrumentation and alerting for systems that are central to every pentest Horizon3 runs.
- Raise the technical bar — contribute through design reviews, technical writing, merge request reviews, clear API contracts with neighboring platform and product teams, and durable decision records.
REQUIRED EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE
- 4+ years of software engineering experience.
- Proficiency in Python, Go, or similar languages with experience in large-scale production codebases.
- Production experience with PostgreSQL including schema design, migrations, and query performance at scale.
- Experience building and operating large scale distributed services in AWS (or comparable cloud), with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Hands-on experience with production observability tooling (Datadog, OpenTelemetry, or similar).
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
DESIRED SKILLS
- Production experience with event-driven architectures or streaming platforms — Kafka strongly preferred; Kinesis or Flink also relevant.
- Experience migrating a live system from batch to streaming, or decomposing a monolith into services, without customer-facing regression.
- Experience with Redshift or other columnar/analytical data platforms.
- ETL orchestration experience with Argo, Airflow, Temporal, or comparable tools.
- Graph database experience (Neo4j) and graph data modeling alongside SQL.
- Experience with data reconciliation, backpressure, replay, retries, and schema evolution at scale.
- Background in cybersecurity, pentesting, or vulnerability management.
- Experience with data-at-rest and in-transit encryption patterns (envelope encryption, KMS).
Compensation and Values
At Horizon3, we believe that our people are our greatest asset, and our compensation philosophy reflects this core value. We are committed to fostering an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and rewarded for their contributions. Our compensation structure is designed to be fair, competitive, and transparent, ensuring that every team member is recognized and compensated equitably across roles, levels, and locations.
In accordance with various State’s transparency regulations, we provide the following salary range information for this position:
- Base salary range: $170,000 - $235,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.
- Additional compensation: All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options.
Perks of Horizon3 horizon3.ai
- Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.
- Growth Opportunities: Be part of a dynamic and growing team with numerous career development opportunities.
- Innovative Culture: Work in a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
- Remote Work: We are a 100% remote company. Enjoy the flexibility to work in the way that supports you and brings out your best.
- Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive salary, equity and benefits. Our benefits include health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave.
You Belong Here
Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, hair length or any other legally protected status by law.
Our commitment to diversity and inclusion means we strive to attract, develop, and retain a workforce that reflects the varied communities we serve. We believe that diverse perspectives drive innovation and strengthen our ability to create cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. At Horizon3, every team member is valued and supported in an environment that encourages personal and professional growth.
We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, and we encourage all qualified individuals to apply. Come be a part of Horizon3, where your unique contributions are recognized, and your potential is limitless.
Other Duties
Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.
Application Note
In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.
Application prep
Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.
Keywords to mirror
aisqlapipythongoawsdockerkubernetesrest
- Platform
- ashby
- Effort
- quick
Benefits
Benefits detected in the listing.
Dental
Vision
Parental Leave