Staff Engineer- Network Security & Attack Path Intelligence

As a Staff Engineer - Network Security & Attack Path Intelligence, you will define and lead the technical direction of Safe’s network reachability and attack-path intelligence capabilities across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

You will be the hands-on architect behind systems that connect network topology, identities, vulnerabilities, security controls, and business-critical assets to determine how attackers can move through an enterprise environment.

You’ll collaborate with product, backend, graph, data, AI, and platform teams to build scalable, explainable, and enterprise-ready attack-path capabilities.

This is a high-impact, hands-on technical leadership role. You will architect systems, build prototypes, write production-quality code, and help shape how Safe’s CTEM platform identifies and breaks the attack paths that pose the greatest business risk.

Core Responsibilities:

• Architect Safe’s Attack Path Intelligence: Define the architecture and data model for network topology, effective reachability, trust boundaries, identities, vulnerabilities, controls, and attack paths across complex enterprise environments.
• Build Core Attack Path Capabilities: Write production-quality code for network configuration parsing, reachability analysis, attack-graph construction, graph traversal, exposure chaining, and blast-radius computation. Build prototypes and evolve them into reliable, enterprise-scale services.
• Model Effective Network Reachability: Derive actual connectivity from routing tables, VLANs, ACLs, firewalls, NAT, VPNs, proxies, load balancers, and segmentation policies rather than relying only on documented topology.
• Model Attacker Movement: Build reasoning systems that connect exposed services, vulnerabilities, credentials, Active Directory privileges, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and access to critical assets.
• Prioritize Actionable Attack Paths: Distinguish theoretical paths from reachable, exploitable, and business-critical attack paths. Incorporate exploitability, control effectiveness, asset criticality, and business impact into prioritization.
• Enterprise Security Integrations: Design integrations with firewalls, routers, NAC, EDR, CMDB, Active Directory, vulnerability scanners, NetFlow, cloud platforms, and other enterprise security systems.
• Countermeasure Intelligence: Build a vendor-neutral model for recommending segmentation, isolation, firewall-policy changes, access-control improvements, and compensating controls. Define validation, approval, safety, and rollback requirements.
• AI and Graph Integration: Partner with other engineers to ensure attack-path explanations and countermeasure recommendations are evidence-backed, explainable, technically accurate, and governed through deterministic safety policies.
• Validation & Governance: Build reference attack scenarios, simulation environments, regression datasets, and validation frameworks to verify attack paths and proposed countermeasures without introducing unacceptable operational risk.
• Mentor & Multiply: Guide backend, graph, security, and platform engineers through architectural design, code reviews, prototypes, engineering standards, and complex security-domain decisions.

Minimum Qualifications:

Experience: 12+ years of experience in software engineering, network security, security product engineering, exposure management, or related areas, with a strong record of building and shipping production systems.

Core Technical Skills

• Strong hands-on programming experience in Python, Go, Java, or a similar backend language
• Recent experience writing and shipping production-quality software-not only providing architectural or advisory guidance
• Strong system-design, API-design, data-modeling, and distributed-systems fundamentals
• Experience implementing graph traversal, rule-processing, network automation, configuration analysis, or security analytics
• Ability to independently prototype complex ideas and evolve them into scalable production capabilities
• Familiarity with graph databases and graph-processing technologies

Network Security

• Deep understanding of enterprise on-premises, cloud, and hybrid networks
• Strong knowledge of routing, switching, VLANs, ACLs, firewalls, NAT, VPNs, proxies, load balancers, and network segmentation
• Experience deriving effective reachability across complex network configurations
• Understanding of firewall-policy analysis, change validation, control effectiveness, and security misconfiguration detection

Attack Path & Identity Security

• Strong understanding of Active Directory, Kerberos, identity privilege paths, credential exposure, privilege escalation, and lateral movement
• Experience with attack graphs, attack-path analysis, threat modelling, breach simulation, or exposure chaining
• Ability to connect vulnerabilities and misconfigurations with network reachability and attacker behaviour
• Familiarity with MITRE ATT&CK and common enterprise attack techniques

Product Engineering: Experience translating deep security-domain knowledge into scalable products, analytical systems, or security-platform capabilities.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building attack-path, network digital-twin, microsegmentation, or CTEM products
• Experience with graph databases and large-scale graph computation
• Experience with BloodHound, Nmap, Zeek, Wireshark, NetFlow, or similar technologies
• Experience with Forward Networks, XM Cyber, RedSeal, AlgoSec, Tufin, FireMon, or comparable platforms
• Experience with Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point, Juniper, or other enterprise network-control technologies
• Exposure to Pentera, AttackIQ, Picus, Horizon3.ai, or other security-validation platforms
• Background spanning both offensive and defensive security
• Experience safely validating security controls in production-like environments
• Knowledge of AWS, Azure, or GCP networking
• Experience working with large, complex, and highly regulated enterprises
• Certifications such as OSCP, OSEP, CISSP, CCIE Security, CCNP Security, or GIAC
• Published research, patents, open-source contributions, or previous technical leadership in security-product engineering is a strong plus