Distinguished Engineer – AI-Powered Security Analytics

Netskope • Santa Clara, CA

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About The Position

We are seeking an exceptional Distinguished Engineer to architect next-generation security analytics and AI-powered capabilities within Netskope's platform. This is a high-impact individual contributor role designed for an engineer who excels at solving complex technical problems at the intersection of artificial intelligence, large-scale data systems, and cybersecurity—and who thrives when working on problems that matter.
As a Distinguished Engineer, you will be a technical authority and strategic thought leader, designing and implementing sophisticated systems that leverage cutting-edge AI/ML techniques, graph-based analytics, and real-time data processing to solve critical security challenges that protect the world's largest enterprises.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in distributed systems, data architecture, or ML systems engineering
• Proven ability to make principled trade-offs between performance, cost, scalability, and reliability
• Experience building or optimizing systems that handle high-volume, low-latency data workflows
• Strong foundation in modern data platforms (cloud-native architectures, data lakes, streaming systems)
• You design systems that others execute on, not just execute systems others designed
• You anticipate failure modes, performance cliffs, and operational complexity—and design them out
• You can speak fluently about graph databases, semantic layers, LLM integration, and their security implications
• You balance innovation with pragmatism; you build the minimum necessary sophistication to solve the problem
• You've shipped systems that scaled beyond their original design; you learned from and improved them
• You communicate complex technical ideas clearly to both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders
• You're comfortable being the technical authority on hard problems—and comfortable saying "we need more data" or "this approach won't scale"
• You thrive in ambiguity and can drive clarity through technical investigation

Nice To Haves

• Experience with LLMs, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), or agentic AI systems
• Background in cybersecurity, threat detection, or security analytics
• Track record building platforms that others depend on (vs. point solutions)
• Comfort with open-source technologies and contributing to the broader engineering community

Responsibilities

• Intelligent Data Ingestion & Processing: Design high-throughput, fault-tolerant systems that ingest and normalize security data at massive scale while maintaining data fidelity and cost efficiency
• Next-Generation Query & Analytics: Evaluate, select, and optimize query engines (e.g., Trino, ClickHouse, StarRocks, Spark) to deliver sub-second insights on petabyte-scale datasets
• Semantic Layer for Agentic AI: Build the data abstraction and access layer that enables AI agents to reason over security data autonomously, securely, and accurately
• Tiered Storage Architecture: Design intelligent data lifecycle strategies—from hot operational storage to cold archive—balancing query performance, cost, and compliance
• Intelligent Automation & Detection: Develop ML-driven threat detection, anomaly identification, and automated response mechanisms that scale across millions of events per second

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed