Principal Engineer, Tech Lead - Integrations & APIs

Horizon3 AI

1d•$213,000 - $273,000•Remote

About The Position

Horizon3.ai is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to serve as the Technical Lead for the Platform Integration team. This high-impact role is critical to the scalability of the company's platform. The engineer will be responsible for shaping the systems, architecture, and technical direction of a product that helps security teams prioritize and fix weaknesses. This is a senior individual contributor role that requires technical judgment, cross-functional partnership, and strong execution skills. The nascent team focuses on enhancing existing APIs to be first-class citizens, building a well-documented foundation for integrations, and developing strategic integrations to unlock new features by leveraging data from user systems. The goal is to meet users where they are with their current tooling and use their existing ecosystem products to improve accuracy and reduce downtime in the find-fix-verify loop. The ideal candidate will be adept at translating ambiguous product goals into technical roadmaps, writing production code (primarily backend, with frontend understanding), mentoring engineers, and influencing decisions across multiple projects and teams. Product-minded engineers with an obsession for details and customer outcomes are highly desired. As a Principal engineer, the role involves shaping longer-term technical direction with broader company impact. Initially, the role will split time 50/50 between hands-on coding and architectural design, with a shift towards more design and team unblocking as the team grows.

Requirements

Deep expertise in software architecture, distributed or service-oriented systems, and the engineering tradeoffs involved in building durable, scalable products.
Strong technical leadership experience as a senior individual contributor or technical lead, with a track record of leading through influence rather than formal management authority.
Strong product judgment and the ability to translate business or customer needs into pragmatic technical decisions.
Experience working across multiple projects or workstreams at the same time while maintaining clarity on priorities, risks, and execution sequencing.
Proven ability to work effectively with cross-functional partners including Product, Design, Security, peer engineering teams, and senior leadership.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions and tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders.
A history of mentoring engineers, elevating team performance, and improving engineering craft through design feedback, code reviews, and technical guidance.
Comfort operating in ambiguity and making sound decisions with incomplete information.
You think in terms of platforms and systems, not just features, and you balance security, usability, and scalability in every decision.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
Experience building backend services using at least one modern language, such as Python, Go, Java, TypeScript, or similar.
Experience working with SQL and at least one relational database in production.
Experience building backend services on a cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and familiarity with Docker and containerized applications.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading initiatives around API platforms, headless customer experiences, or agent-based customer flows.
Experience with an integrations platform, particularly with an eye to build speed for new integrations.
Experience with PostgreSQL and performance tuning for large datasets.
Experience with graph databases such as Neo4j or interest in learning them.
Experience building or consuming GraphQL backends.
Experience with ETL pipelines and data processing tools (e.g., Airflow-like frameworks, custom ETL jobs, or similar).
Experience with observability stacks (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana) and instrumentation of services.
Experience in cybersecurity, vulnerability management, security analytics, security data platforms, or adjacent domains
Experience building products or platforms in vulnerability management, exposure management, security telemetry, or related cybersecurity domains
Familiarity with risk scoring, prioritization systems, or data-intensive backend workflows
Experience partnering closely with product managers to define and sequence an MVP without painting the team into a corner.
Experience helping define technical standards or practices adopted beyond your immediate team.
A track record of shaping technical direction more broadly across an organization, with influence extending beyond a single team or domain.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end technical vision for the Integration team and its supporting services, from initial concept through implementation, iteration, and long-term evolution.
Partner with cross functional stakeholders to translate ambiguous product and business goals into concrete technical strategy, architecture, and execution plans for the Integration team.
Contribute production code, setting the standard for design quality, code quality, and operational rigor.
Lead architectural decisions for scalable backend systems that balance velocity, reliability, maintainability, extensibility, and operability.
Drive execution across multiple concurrent projects and initiatives, identifying risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs early and helping the team sequence work effectively.
Partner closely with Product, Engineering leadership, Design, and adjacent engineering teams to deliver cross-functional initiatives and ensure technical decisions reflect both business context and customer needs.
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including leadership stakeholders.
Set and continually raise the technical bar through architecture reviews, code reviews, technical writing, and strong engineering judgment under ambiguity.
Mentor and develop engineers on the team by providing thoughtful feedback, technical coaching, and frameworks that help others do the best work of their careers.
Support hiring by helping attract, interview, and calibrate strong engineering talent as the organization grows.