Staff Backend Engineer

Horizon3.ai

. Set technical direction and architecture for backend systems powering NodeZero's internal pentesting capabilities .

Posted 11/6/2026full-timeRemote • United StatesLead💰 $229,000 - $270,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

Use this summary to align your resume positioning with the role.

Demonstrates expertise in backend architecture and design, focusing on high-throughput ETL pipelines, data processing systems, and API development. Proven ability to lead technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and ensure operational health and scalability in production environments.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Backend Architecture DesignETL Pipeline DevelopmentSQL Query OptimizationGraphQL API DevelopmentTechnical Leadership

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

PythonSQLObject-Oriented ProgrammingFunctional ProgrammingData Processing SystemsRelational Data ModelsContainerizationOrchestration EnginesGraph DatabasesTechnical Writing

Soft Skills

Analytical SkillsProblem-Solving SkillsMentoring

Tools & Technologies

AWSAzureGCPDockerKubernetesDatadogPrometheusOpenTelemetryTemporalAirflow

Industry Keywords

CybersecurityPentestingData WorkflowsOperational HealthScalability

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowAWSAzureCyber SecurityDockerETLGoogle Cloud PlatformGraphQLKubernetesNeo4jPrometheusPythonSQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Set technical direction and architecture for backend systems powering NodeZero's internal pentesting capabilities
Lead backend initiatives from problem definition and design through delivery and production operation
Design reliable processing workflows for large-scale, long-running internal assessments and data workloads
Scale processing and data-access patterns across concurrent workloads with visibility into progress, failures, and throughput
Design and operate high-throughput ETL pipelines transforming attack-team knowledge-graph output into queryable relational datasets
Guide attack-path data models and presentation layers for accurate customer results
Read, optimize, and refactor complex SQL queries
Define and evolve GraphQL and graph-based API patterns
Own operational health, observability, uptime, scalability, release readiness, and on-call response
Drive architecture decisions across team boundaries and write design documents
Align backend investments with product priorities and communicate risks, dependencies, and options
Mentor and unblock engineers through design discussions, code reviews, and technical guidance
Partner with frontend engineers, product managers, and designers to deliver responsive user experiences
Travel up to 5% may be required

Requirements

What you’ll need

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
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 with AWS, Azure, or GCP
Experience using Docker
Experience with Python, SQLAlchemy, versioned migrations, uv, ruff, mypy, and pytest
Experience with orchestration engines such as Temporal, Prefect, Airflow, Celery, or similar
Experience with GraphQL backends and graph databases such as Neo4j
Experience with observability tools such as Datadog, Prometheus, or OpenTelemetry
Experience deploying containerized services in Kubernetes-based production environments
Experience with cybersecurity or internal attack, identity, privilege-escalation, and vulnerability data
Strong technical writing skills
Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
Must be legally authorized to work in the United States; application asks whether sponsorship will be required

Benefits

Comp & perks

Equity package in the form of stock options for all full-time roles
Health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family
Flexible vacation policy
Generous parental leave
Career development opportunities
Inclusive culture
Collaborative environment encouraging creativity and out-of-the-box thinking
Remote and hybrid work models depending on role and location