Staff Software Engineer
Proofpoint•Boston, MA
•Hybrid
About The Position
Proofpoint is a global leader in human- and agent-centric cybersecurity. We protect how people, data, and AI agents connect across email, cloud, and collaboration tools. Over 80 of the Fortune 100, 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations trust Proofpoint to stop threats, prevent data loss, and build resilience across their people and AI workflows. Our mission is simple: safeguard the digital world and empower people to work securely and confidently. Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent
- 10+ years in distributed systems and backend architecture
- Knowledge of CAP theorem, consistency models, partitioning, replication, and sharding strategies
- Experience with streaming/messaging systems (Kinesis) and real-time/batch processing frameworks (Flink, Spark, Beam)
- Proficiency in one or more of: NodeJs, Go, Java, Scala, or Rust; familiarity with Python, or C/C++ a plus
- Experience with NoSQL and SQL databases (Postgres, Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis, DynamoDB, etc.)
- Experience with graph databases (Neptune, Neo4J, etc.)
- Cloud experience (AWS, GCP, Azure, or similar)
- Familiarity with edge-to-cloud and multi-cloud/hybrid environments
- Exposure to AI/ML data pipelines, large-scale analytics platforms, and AI-assisted developer tooling
- Knowledge of enterprise security frameworks and compliance standards (SOC2, ISO, GDPR) is a plus
Responsibilities
- Build and scale a big data platform processing billions of data points daily
- Design resilient systems across synchronous and asynchronous (event-driven, streaming) paradigms
- Develop RESTful APIs in a microservices architecture
- Establish standards for scalability, fault tolerance, and performance optimization
- Drive design decisions across streaming, processing, and storage layers for performance and cost efficiency
- Support time-series, event-driven, and analytical workloads
- Work with distributed messaging systems, scalable data stores (DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, etc.) and processing frameworks (Flink, Spark)
- Ensure alignment with security, compliance, and data governance requirements
- Champion AI-powered tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) to accelerate development velocity across design, coding, testing, and review
Benefits
- Competitive compensation
- Comprehensive benefits
- Career success on your terms
- Flexible work environment
- Annual wellness and community outreach days
- Always on recognition for your contributions
- Global collaboration and networking opportunities
- flexible time off
- a comprehensive well-being program with two paid Wellbeing Days and two paid Volunteer Days per year
- a three-week Work from Anywhere option
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
