Staff Software Engineer, Database Platform

Get to Know Us

Horizon3 is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find, fix and verify exploitable attack vectors before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZero™ platform, delivers production-safe autonomous pentests and other key assessment operations that scale across the largest internal, external, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. NodeZero has been adopted by organizations of all sizes, from small educational institutions to government agencies and Global 100 enterprises. It is used by IT Ops/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.

We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers & operators, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools and false positives, resulting in alert fatigue, blind spots, "checkbox" security culture, cybersecurity skills shortage, and the long lead time and expense of hiring outside consultants. Collectively, we are a team of learn-it-alls, committed to a culture of respect, collaboration, ownership, and results.

As a remote first company, we require minimum 25Mbps consumer grade broadband connection.

What You'll Do

The Staff Engineer on the DB Platform team is the technical anchor for database architecture and reliability across Horizon3. NodeZero runs thousands of pentests generating enormous volumes of structured data — vulnerability findings, asset graphs, scan histories, time-series telemetry, and customer configurations. Every team at Horizon3 depends on the data stores this team builds and operates. You will set the technical direction for how Horizon3 designs, provisions, scales, and operates its database systems — from PostgreSQL and graph databases to time-series stores.

This is a hands-on staff-level role. You will write production code, produce architecture designs, drive critical performance and reliability decisions, and mentor engineers through the craft of database engineering. The team is building from a small but strong foundation — your job is to raise the technical bar dramatically as the data volumes and query complexity grow. This role reports to the Data Platform Engineering Manager.

Responsibilities

• Database Architecture: Set the technical direction for Horizon3's database systems — schema design philosophy, data modeling standards, indexing strategies, and query contract design across teams

• Performance Engineering: Own query performance across the platform — identify slow queries, produce execution plan analyses, implement fixes, and design the observability systems that catch regressions early

• Reliability & Operations: Own the reliability engineering for all data stores — replication, failover, backup validation, capacity planning, and database incident response

• Migration Engineering: Design and own the migration framework that makes schema evolution safe in production — zero-downtime migrations, reversible changes, and migration testing standards

• Cross-team Enablement: Serve as the database expert for application engineering teams — review their schemas, query patterns, and ORM usage; set the access patterns that prevent problems from reaching production

• Mentorship: Mentor P4 engineers through design review, code review, and deep technical pairing; be the person the team turns to when they hit a hard database problem

What You'll Bring

Database Engineering

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with deep specialization in database systems and data infrastructure

• Expert-level PostgreSQL proficiency — you have tuned complex production query plans, managed replication topology, and debugged the hardest vacuum and locking issues

• Deep understanding of database architecture trade-offs: normalization vs. denormalization, indexing strategies (partial, composite, covering), partitioning, and connection pooling at scale

• Experience designing zero-downtime migration workflows in high-volume production environments

Systems & Architecture

• Experience with graph databases (Neo4j or equivalent) — NodeZero's asset model is fundamentally graph-structured and you need to be comfortable in that paradigm

• Proficiency with time-series or columnar stores (ClickHouse, TimescaleDB, or equivalent) for high-throughput analytics workloads

• Track record running database systems in Kubernetes or cloud-managed environments (RDS, Cloud SQL, or equivalent) at production scale

• Proficiency in Go or Python for building tooling, access layers, and migration infrastructure

Technical Leadership

• Track record of setting engineering standards that other engineers adopt — database design guidelines, query review checklists, schema governance patterns

• Ability to produce clear architecture documents and drive database design decisions across team boundaries

• Experience mentoring mid-level engineers through database design review and code review

Nice to Haves

• Experience building multi-tenant database architectures where customer data isolation is a hard requirement

• Background in cybersecurity or experience storing and querying vulnerability, asset, or network topology data at scale

• Familiarity with eBPF-based database observability tools or advanced profiling approaches

• Experience with vector databases or embedding stores for ML-adjacent infrastructure

Travel Required

We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 5% of travel to be successful.

In accordance with various State's transparency regulations, we provide the following salary range information for this position:

• Base salary range: $229,500 - $260,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.

• Additional compensation: This role may also be eligible for an equity package (in the form of stock options). If any other compensation benefits apply, they will be discussed during the interview process.

Perks of Horizon3

• Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.

• Remote Work: We are a 100% remote company. Enjoy the flexibility to work in the way that supports you and brings out your best.

• Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive salary and benefits which includes health, vision & dental care for you and your family, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave.

You Belong Here

Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, or any other legally protected status by law.