Staff Software Engineer

TrendAI™, the global AI security leader and enterprise business unit of Trend Micro, empowers organizations with full AI visibility and consolidated security that inspires confidence, drives innovation, and eliminates risk.

At TrendAI™, we’re always seeking exceptional talent; people who want to collaborate with the best and push boundaries together. Here, your work goes beyond building a career. You will help protect what matters and play a vital role in shaping a safer, more trustworthy AI-powered future.

AI Fearlessly.

Job Description:

LOCATION

On-site / Hybrid (Austin, TX)

Position Summary

TrendAI is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the architectural evolution of our on-premises network security management appliance and its bridge to our cloud microservices platform. The role is anchored in the appliance backend, a mature Java codebase running on WildFly (EJBs, JPA, JMS, JAX-RS, SOAP, and REST) with MariaDB and ColumnStore data tiers. You will lead the modernization of this monolith, untangling complex subsystems and optimizing high-throughput, multi-threaded services.

This is a full-stack technical leadership role. You will deliver modern web management surfaces with React and TypeScript, and expand into companion cloud microservices built with Go and Node on AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, S3, AWS IoT). As a Staff IC, you will own technical direction, mentor engineers across teams, and champion AI-augmented development workflows to accelerate delivery while maintaining enterprise reliability.

Responsibilities

1. Lead backend architecture and engineering across our flagship on-premises management appliance, evolving a large-scale Java codebase that handles distributed device configuration, policy compilation, health monitoring, and high-volume event ingestion.

2. Modernize and modularize legacy subsystems within the Java EE / WildFly monolith: refactor tight couplings into clean, testable service boundaries and well-defined internal interfaces without disrupting customer upgrade paths or operational uptime.

3. Own data tier architecture and performance across relational and analytical data stores (MariaDB, ColumnStore, RDS), including query optimization, connection pooling, transactional integrity, and automated schema migrations across release boundaries.

4. Deliver cohesive full-stack capabilities, partnering backend APIs with modern web user interfaces (React, TypeScript) to provide responsive, enterprise-grade fleet management experiences.

5. Design and evolve high-performance RESTful APIs alongside long-standing SOAP services, ensuring robust backward compatibility and interoperability between on-premises appliances, endpoints, and external management consumers.

6. Progressively architect, build, and integrate companion cloud microservices (primarily Go, alongside Node.js and Python) on AWS using event-driven and serverless architectures (Lambda, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB, RDS, AWS IoT) to connect on-prem appliance fleets into the broader cloud platform.

7. Investigate and resolve high-complexity distributed systems failures, concurrency issues, memory leaks, thread contention, and performance bottlenecks across the stack using JVM profilers, database query analyzers, thread/heap dumps, and Linux system telemetry.

8. Establish and champion AI-augmented software engineering practices: direct agentic coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code) on complex refactoring and feature tasks, set architectural guardrails, and mandate rigorous validation standards so AI velocity enhances codebase health.

9. Architect resilience and fault tolerance into fleet-management subsystems, including high availability (HA), failover semantics, cluster replication, and disaster recovery.

10. Author comprehensive automated test suites spanning JUnit backend unit/integration tests, Go testing packages, database test tiers, contract tests (Pact), and end-to-end browser workflows (Playwright), raising code quality across legacy and modern repositories.

11. Collaborate across organizational boundaries, partnering with architects, Product Management, QA, and Sustaining to scope technical initiatives, negotiate interface contracts, and align engineering roadmaps.

12. Mentor and elevate engineers across the organization through deep design reviews, high-leverage code reviews, architectural RFCs, and technical brownbags.

Qualifications

1. 8+ years of professional software engineering experience designing, building, and maintaining enterprise-grade production software, with significant depth in backend systems.

2. Deep expertise in Java and the JVM ecosystem in large, multi-threaded, high-concurrency codebases (memory management, garbage collection tuning, thread safety, profiling).

3. Solid experience with enterprise Java architectures (WildFly or comparable application servers; Java EE / Jakarta EE technologies such as EJBs, JPA, JMS, JAX-RS).

4. Strong relational and analytical database architecture skills (MariaDB, MySQL, ColumnStore, or PostgreSQL): schema design, index optimization, complex query tuning, transaction management, and safe, zero-downtime migration strategies.

5. Proven full-stack capabilities: hands-on experience designing and implementing modern front-end applications (React, TypeScript, modern CSS/build tooling) alongside RESTful APIs.

6. Experience designing and maintaining both RESTful APIs and SOAP-based service paradigms with strict backward-compatibility guarantees.

7. Track record of successful refactoring in large, mature codebases: untangling legacy monoliths, introducing abstraction boundaries, and applying design patterns (e.g., strangler fig, clean architecture) without breaking backward compatibility.

8. Solid Linux systems programming and networking fundamentals: POSIX concepts, process lifecycle, inter-process communication, sockets, TCP/IP, and diagnostic tooling.

9. Demonstrated experience integrating agentic AI tools (such as Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot) into daily software development, with the engineering discipline to critically evaluate, verify, and test generated code before merge.

10. High-caliber debugging and root-cause analysis skills across distributed systems, multi-threaded applications, and database-intensive workloads.

11. Strong technical communication, writing, and leadership skills: experience authoring architecture design records (ADRs/RFCs), leading cross-functional design reviews, and mentoring senior and junior engineers.

12. BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience. Advanced degree welcome but not required.

Preferred Qualifications

Strongest candidates bring meaningful time spent on any of the following:

1. Experience building and operating cloud-native microservices on AWS using Go, Node.js, and serverless technologies (AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, AWS IoT, CloudWatch).

2. Domain experience in network security appliances or fleet management systems (firewalls, IPS/IDS, SIEM, security management consoles, network telemetry ingestion).

3. Experience with infrastructure-as-code and cloud automation tooling (Terraform, Terragrunt, Serverless Framework).

4. Familiarity with event streaming, message brokers, or asynchronous processing architectures (JMS, Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS/SNS).

5. Hands-on experience with modern test automation frameworks (Playwright, Vitest, Jest) and consumer-driven contract testing (Pact).

6. Experience migrating legacy build, dependency, and CI/CD systems toward modern declarative pipelines.

7. Contributions to open-source software, internal architectural standards, or tech community leadership.

About the team

This team owns the mission-critical management layer of our network security appliance family, alongside the cloud microservices platform that connects distributed appliances into a unified security mesh. The codebase blends a mature, enterprise-scale Java appliance backend with modern cloud-native services in Go, Node.js, and React. We take pride in solving hard systems problems, modernizing legacy architectures with care, and aggressively adopting AI-augmented engineering workflows to accelerate delivery while holding an uncompromising bar for security, stability, and customer trust.

What We Offer You:

You're important to us. What matters to you, matters to us too. Trend Micro provides benefit options for you and your family. Here some of the top-rated benefits that employees enjoy today:

Comprehensive health benefits and paid time off package

Pre-partum, maternity, parental, medical leave and adoption assistance

Mental Health Wellness Program & Annual Wellness Incentive

401(k) with company match

Pet Insurance

Collaborative and innovative culture

We are committed to fostering a professional, respectful, and inclusive work environment that promotes collaboration and high performance. We value diverse backgrounds and perspectives and welcome candidates who bring unique strengths and experiences. If you’re excited about this role and believe you can contribute and grow with us, we encourage you to apply.

Be Passionate. Be Innovative. Be a Trender.

This position does not offer sponsorship for work permit applications or renewals, either now or in the future. Candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for employment-based visa sponsorship, both currently and moving forward. The company will not sponsor applicants for U.S. work visa status for this role (including, but not limited to, H-1B, L-1, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, F-1, J-1, OPT, CPT, or any other employment-based visa

At Trend Micro, we embrace change, empower people, and encourage innovation in a connected world. Our diversity and multicultural workforce are key contributing factors to our success across the globe. Trend Micro provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. Trend Micro does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy and childbirth or related medical conditions, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care leave status, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity.