---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform at Horizon3 AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-data-platform-horizon3-ai-united-states-sa3ch78sx4rp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-07'
---

# Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform at Horizon3 AI

- **Company:** [Horizon3 AI](https://feeny.ai/companies/horizon3-ai)
- **Location:** United States
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-10-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/horizon3ai/aca176e3-47b7-48e3-89d0-d380b2636e72

## Job description

Get to Know Us [Horizon3](http://Horizon3.ai) 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 Data 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.

## Compensation and Values

At Horizon3, we believe that our people are our greatest asset, and our compensation philosophy reflects this core value. We are committed to fostering an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and rewarded for their contributions. Our compensation structure is designed to be fair, competitive, and transparent, ensuring that every team member is recognized and compensated equitably across roles, levels, and locations. 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](http://Horizon3.ai)

- Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.
- Growth Opportunities: Be part of a dynamic and growing team with numerous career development opportunities.
- Innovative Culture: Work in a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
- 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. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion means we strive to attract, develop, and retain a workforce that reflects the varied communities we serve. We believe that diverse perspectives drive innovation and strengthen our ability to create cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. At Horizon3, every team member is valued and supported in an environment that encourages personal and professional growth. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, and we encourage all qualified individuals to apply. Come be a part of Horizon3, where your unique contributions are recognized, and your potential is limitless.

Other Duties Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Application Note In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

## About Horizon3 AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Horizon3.ai provides an autonomous penetration testing platform (NodeZero) that safely hacks production environments to identify and fix exploitable attack paths using AI.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D – latest funding round in 2026, led by Prosperity7 Ventures)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States (447 Battery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111)
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Snehal Antani (Co-Founder & CEO); founded by a mix of US Special Operations, US National Security, and cybersecurity industry veterans

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Cybersecurity (autonomous penetration testing, vulnerability management, continuous security validation)
- **Target customers**: B2B – large enterprises, Fortune 100, government agencies (NSA, CISA), healthcare providers, financial services, manufacturing, education, public sector
- **Mission**: “Turn the map around” – using the attacker’s perspective to help enterprises prioritize defensive efforts. The company aims to shift the advantage from attackers to defenders by fighting AI with AI.

## Products & Services
- **[NodeZero®](https://horizon3.ai/)**: Autonomous penetration testing SaaS platform. Safely runs real attack techniques in production environments (no agents, no disruption). Discovers and chains exploitable vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, harvested credentials, and dangerous defaults across external, identity, on-prem, cloud, and Kubernetes attack surfaces. Also includes Active Directory password auditing and phishing impact testing. Continuously validates fixes and repeats autonomously.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metrics**: 
  - Annual Revenue: **$35.5M** (per LinkedIn)
  - Total Funding: **$187M** (per LinkedIn) / **$181M** (per CB Insights – conflicting reports; both cited)
  - **225,000+** production-safe tests completed
  - **5,000+** customers
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: 
  - SignalFire (lead in Seed, Series A, Series B)
  - Craft Ventures (lead Series C)
  - Prosperity7 Ventures (lead Series D – 2026)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Ranked **#1 in Security** on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list
  - **#3 overall** on the 2025 Deloitte Technology Fast 500
  - Fast Company’s **Most Innovative Companies** (2026) – #1 in Security
  - Named to the **Fortune Cyber 60** (2023 & 2025)
  - Two-time **Black Unicorn Award** winner
  - Headcount grew **115.5% YoY** to 341 employees (LinkedIn)
  - Active job postings up **168.2% YoY**; operates in 14 countries

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-driven autonomous testing** that learns from hundreds of thousands of tests and uses the right AI (ML, GenAI) for each problem – delivers evidence-based results with **zero hallucinations**.
- **Production-safe** – zero downtime across all production tests, trusted by the world’s most sensitive high-security environments (NSA, CISA, Fortune 10, major healthcare).
- **No agents required** – fully self-service SaaS, safe to run continuously.
- **Real attack techniques** – not a scanner; shows actual attacker paths and impact.
- **Rapid verification** – instantly confirms fixes and repeats the cycle, enabling a continuous validation loop.

## Strategic Focus
- **Continuous validation** – driving a loop of test-fix-verify-repeat autonomously.
- **Fighting AI with AI** – building NodeZero to operate at machine speed against AI-powered attacks.
- **Global expansion** – already in 14 countries, with active hiring in EMEA, APAC, and the Americas.
- **Scaling the team** – 59 active job postings (as of mid-2026), with emphasis on engineering, sales, and customer success roles.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Rated **5.0/5.0 on LinkedIn** (76 reviews) with perfect scores for Culture (5.0), Career (4.9), Compensation (4.7), and Work-Life (4.6). Described as a “kick-ass organization hell bent on disrupting an industry” with a team of “motivated learn-it-alls.”
- **Work Policy**: Remote-friendly (most roles listed as remote, HQ in San Francisco, CA). Offers flexibility across time zones.
- **Notable Perks** (from Built In and LinkedIn):
  - Comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, vision, FSA)
  - Life insurance, disability insurance
  - 401(k) with company matching
  - Equity and employee stock purchase plan
  - Generous parental leave and family medical leave
  - Performance bonuses
  - Job training, conferences, and customized development tracks
  - Promotion policies and career growth support
- **Engineering Culture**: Built by US Special Operations and National Security veterans. Emphasis on high autonomy, real-world impact, and cutting-edge AI/security work. “If you want to be part of a kick-ass organization hell bent on disrupting an industry and keeping attackers at bay, let’s talk.”

## Sources
1. [horizon3.ai – Homepage](https://horizon3.ai/)
2. [horizon3.ai – About/Team](https://horizon3.ai/about-us/)
3. [LinkedIn – Horizon3.ai Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizon3ai)
4. [Built In – Horizon3.ai Careers & Perks](https://builtin.com/company/horizon3ai)
5. [CB Insights – Horizon3.ai Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/horizon-3-ai)

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