Staff Software Engineer

Overview In this role you will help design and scale Proofpoint’s big data platform, processing billions of data points daily. You will work with cross-functional teams to build resilient, scalable systems and RESTful microservices, optimizing for performance, security, and cost. You’ll drive decisions across streaming, processing, and storage layers while supporting time-series, event-driven, and analytical workloads. This is an impact-driven role at a security-focused company, offering exposure to AI-powered tooling and large-scale data analytics. Compensation / Benefitscompetitive compensationcomprehensive benefitsflexible work environmentwellbeing daysvolunteer daysWork from Anywhere option ResponsibilitiesBuild and scale a big data platform processing billions of data points dailyDesign resilient systems across synchronous and asynchronous paradigmsDevelop RESTful APIs in a microservices architectureEstablish standards for scalability, fault tolerance, and performanceDrive design decisions across streaming, processing, and storage layers for performance and cost efficiencySupport time-series, event-driven, and analytical workloadsWork with distributed messaging systems and scalable data stores (e.g., DynamoDB, Elasticsearch) and processing frameworks (Flink, Spark)Ensure alignment with security, compliance, and data governance requirementsChampion AI-powered tools to accelerate development velocity across design, coding, testing, and review Key requirements10+ years in distributed systems and backend architectureKnowledge of CAP theorem, consistency models, partitioning, replication, and sharding strategiesExperience with streaming/messaging systems (Kinesis) and real-time/batch processing frameworks (Flink, Spark, Beam)Proficiency in one or more: NodeJs, Go, Java, Scala, or Rust; Python/C++ a plusExperience with NoSQL and SQL databases (Postgres, Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis, DynamoDB, etc.)Experience with graph databases (Neptune, Neo4J, etc.)Cloud experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) and multi-cloud/hybrid environmentsExposure to AI/ML data pipelines and AI-assisted developer toolingKnowledge of enterprise security frameworks and compliance standards (SOC2, ISO, GDPR) is a plusNodeJsGoJavaScalaRustKinesis