Principal Software Engineer, Database Platform

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Define and lead the technical roadmap for the Database Platform in collaboration with engineering leadership and the Pentest Platform organization.

• Take ownership of database architecture decisions, which encompass schema design, partitioning strategies, migration patterns, and scalability methods.

• Produce design documents that define the team's collective technical model.

• Act as the principal PostgreSQL expert in areas such as query optimization, indexing, partitioning, replication, and connection pooling.

• Design and oversee the development of NodeZero's graph-based asset model, which represents hosts, services, credentials, and vulnerabilities across pentests.

• Manage schema design reviews to ensure that migrations are safe, reversible, and executed with zero downtime.

• Develop tools and engineering practices to facilitate rigorous schema changes.

• Provide mentorship to P5 and P4 engineers through code reviews, design reviews, and collaborative programming.

• Collaborate with teams such as Data Ingestion, Asset Inventory, API Platform, and Security Research on data contracts, query performance standards, and architectural guidelines.

• Write production code and establish the technical direction for the Database Platform team.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive, production-tested expertise in PostgreSQL, including knowledge of query planner internals, advanced indexing, partitioning, logical replication, large-scale vacuuming, and connection pool tuning.

• Proven experience in architecting multi-tenant databases at scale, incorporating row-level security and tenant isolation.

• Familiarity with large-scale production schema migrations, including zero-downtime migrations, backwards-compatible schema evolution, and migration tools like Flyway or golang-migrate.

• Knowledge of graph data models and graph databases such as Neo4j or AWS Neptune, or relational query patterns resembling graphs, such as recursive CTEs, ltree, and adjacency lists.

• Proficient in Go or Python, capable of writing production application code.

• Established history of defining database architecture at scale, from design documentation to production implementation across various companies or teams.

• Strong grasp of data architecture trade-offs, including normalization versus denormalization, consistency versus availability, OLTP versus OLAP separation, and schema-first versus schema-last design approaches.

• Capability to contemplate long-term schema design and 10× data-volume growth.

• Ability to articulate complex database decisions effectively in design documents, Architectural Decision Records (ADRs), and cross-team reviews.

• Proven capacity to enforce database standards across multiple teams without direct reporting authority.

• Experience in establishing processes for schema reviews, migration safety, and query performance evaluations.

• A history of mentoring engineers through code review, pair programming, and architectural guidance.

• Background in cybersecurity data, experience with time-series databases, familiarity with compliance, analytical querying or BI/reporting experience, and contributions to open-source projects are desirable.

• Must possess legal authorization to work in the United States.

• Availability for full-time work is required.

🏝️ Benefits

• An equity package in the form of stock options for all full-time positions.

• Comprehensive health, vision, and dental insurance for you and your family.

• A flexible vacation policy.

• Generous parental leave.

• Opportunities for career development.

• An inclusive and collaborative work environment.

• A fully remote work model.

• Up to 5% travel.