{"id":138490,"url":"https://alion.io/job/horizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls","title":"Senior Backend Engineer, Precision Defense","company":{"id":3088,"name":"Horizon3","domain":"horizon3.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/horizon3","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":76,"open_postings":17,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.941,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":39,"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":185000,"max_usd":320000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":1105},"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Crowdstrike","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"ETL/ELT","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"GraphQL","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Microsoft Defender","optional":false},{"name":"Neo4j","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Scala","optional":false},{"name":"SentinelOne","optional":false},{"name":"SIEM","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-27T17:11:14Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T04:27:10Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":54,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":54},"description":"Get to Know Us\nHorizon3 is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find and fix and verify exploitable attack vectors before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZeroTM 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 ITOps/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.\nWe are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools, 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.\nRole Overview:\nAs a Senior Backend Engineer on the Precision Defense team, you'll help build the systems that move our customers from reactive security toward proactive, evidence-based defense. The team operates across three closely related areas - Rapid Response, Tripwires/Deception, Security Controls/EDR, and Autonomous Defense - and you'll contribute to backend infrastructure that spans all of them.\nDepending on where you land within the team, your focus might include: analyzing and surfacing emerging vulnerability intelligence; building and scaling the workflows that help customers identify exposed assets and validate their defenses; deploying and improving deception signals that catch attackers in the act; or producing credible evidence that endpoint detection and response (EDR) controls are working as expected. Across all of these, the common thread is translating attacker-informed findings into measurable defensive outcomes for our customers.\nThis is a high-impact role on a team that owns customer-facing security workflows, supports production incidents, and ships features that directly influence how organizations understand and close their defensive gaps.\nWhat You’ll Do\nResponsibilities\nBuild and maintain backend APIs, ETL pipelines, and data processing systems that power Rapid Response, Tripwires, EDR effectiveness, and Autonomous Defense workflows.\n\nDesign and implement GraphQL APIs to facilitate data interactions across product components.\n\nDevelop event-driven services and distributed systems that support reliable, scalable security automation.\n\nCollaborate with frontend engineers, attack engineers, and product managers to deliver customer-facing features that communicate security findings clearly and actionably.\n\nContribute to production reliability: monitoring, alerting, incident response, and debugging across ETL, deployment, and data-propagation workflows.\n\nSupport safe, explainable, and reversible security automation - understanding that incorrect behavior in this domain can mean missed detections, noisy alerts, or false confidence for customers.\n\nWhat You'll Bring:\nAbility to own and manage concurrent initiatives, demonstrating effective judgment in prioritization and time management.\n\nDriven, self-managed, capable of conceiving and implementing solutions on your own and with a team.\n\nA strong desire to continuously improve and learn new technologies in a fast-paced Agile development environment.\n\nExcellent analytical and problem-solving skills, effective communication, attention to detail, and high-quality work.\n\nStrong technical documentation ability to support the development process.\n\nEffective communication and collaboration with designers, developers, and product managers.\n\nAbility and interest in mentoring junior and mid-level engineers to foster their growth and development.\n\nRequired Education / Experience:\nBachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field.\n\n7+ years of professional software engineering experience using modern object-oriented or functional languages (Python, Java, Go, Scala, C++, TypeScript, etc.).\n\nExperience building applications on cloud computing platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP, using container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.\n\nExpert proficiency in SQL.\n\nWhat Sets You Apart:\nExperience in one or more of the following areas: EDR/endpoint telemetry and control validation; detection engineering and SOC/SIEM workflows; threat detection, deception systems, honeypots, or tripwire-style platforms; vulnerability intelligence and rapid response workflows.\n\nFamiliarity with major EDR platforms (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft Defender) at the telemetry or API level.\n\nUnderstands detection logic, alert triage workflows, and how security teams consume and act on findings.\n\nComfort translating attack behavior into measurable defensive outcomes.\n\nExpert proficiency in SQL and experience with relational (PostgreSQL) and graph (Neo4j) database architectures.\n\nExperience building GraphQL backends.\n\nBackground in event-driven systems, distributed services, observability, and production reliability.\n\nPerks of Horizon3\nInclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.\n\nGrowth Opportunities: Be part of a dynamic and growing team with numerous career development opportunities.\n\nInnovative Culture: Work in a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.\n\nHybrid & Remote Work: We embrace a mix of remote and hybrid work models depending on role and location, including our Chicago office, where some roles require regular in-office presence.\n\nCompetitive Compensation: We offer competitive salary, equity and benefits. Our benefits include health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave.\n\nCompensation and Values\nAt 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.\nIn accordance with various State’s transparency regulations, we provide the following salary range information for this position:\nBase salary range: $170,00 - $235,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.\n\nAdditional compensation: All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options.\n\nYou Belong Here\nHorizon3 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.\nOur 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.\nWe 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.\nOther Duties\nPlease 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8356,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Dental insurance","Equity","Flexible vacation policy","Growth opportunities","Hybrid work","Parental leave","Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Penetration Testing","Information Security","Vulnerability Management","Cybersecurity AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-27T17:11:14Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":19,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.437,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":53,"expected_fill_days":39,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/horizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/horizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-21T04:40:50Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":6811,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3088},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3088"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fhorizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fhorizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fhorizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/horizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fhorizon3-senior-engineer-back-end-security-controls"}]}