Principal Engineer, Technical Lead

About the role

Horizon3.ai is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to enabling organizations to proactively find, 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 IT Ops/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.

What You’ll Do

• Own the end-to-end technical vision for the RBEM and its supporting services, from initial concept through implementation, iteration, and long-term evolution.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to translate ambiguous product and business goals into concrete technical strategy, architecture, and execution plans for the RBEM team.
• Contribute production code, setting the standard for design quality, code quality, and operational rigor.
• Lead architectural decisions for scalable backend systems that balance velocity, reliability, maintainability, extensibility, and operability.
• Drive execution across multiple concurrent projects and initiatives, identifying risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs early and helping the team sequence work effectively.
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering leadership, Design, and adjacent engineering teams to deliver cross-functional initiatives and ensure technical decisions reflect both business context and customer needs.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including leadership stakeholders.
• Set and continually raise the technical bar through architecture reviews, code reviews, technical writing, and strong engineering judgment under ambiguity.
• Mentor and develop engineers on the team by providing thoughtful feedback, technical coaching, and frameworks that help others do the best work of their careers.
• Support hiring by helping attract, interview, and calibrate strong engineering talent as the RBEM organization grows.

What You’ll Bring

• Deep expertise in software architecture, distributed or service-oriented systems, and the engineering tradeoffs involved in building durable, scalable products.
• Strong technical leadership experience as a senior individual contributor or technical lead, with a track record of leading through influence rather than formal management authority.
• Strong product judgment and the ability to translate business or customer needs into pragmatic technical decisions.
• Experience working across multiple projects or workstreams at the same time while maintaining clarity on priorities, risks, and execution sequencing.
• Proven ability to work effectively with cross-functional partners including Product, Design, Security, peer engineering teams, and senior leadership.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions and tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders.
• A history of mentoring engineers, elevating team performance, and improving engineering craft through design feedback, code reviews, and technical guidance.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and making sound decisions with incomplete information.

Required Education/Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience building backend services using at least one modern language, such as Python, Go, Java, TypeScript, or similar.
• Experience working with SQL and at least one relational database in production.
• Experience building backend services on a cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and familiarity with Docker and containerized applications.

Preferred Education/Experience

• Experience with PostgreSQL and performance tuning for large datasets.
• Experience with graph databases such as Neo4j or interest in learning them.
• Experience building or consuming GraphQL backends.
• Experience with ETL pipelines and data processing tools (e.g., Airflow-like frameworks, custom ETL jobs, or similar).
• Experience with observability stacks (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana) and instrumentation of services.
• Experience in cybersecurity, vulnerability management, security analytics, security data platforms, or adjacent domains.

What Sets You Apart?

• Experience building products or platforms in vulnerability management, exposure management, security telemetry, or related cybersecurity domains.
• Familiarity with risk scoring, prioritization systems, or data-intensive backend workflows.
• Experience partnering closely with product managers to define and sequence an MVP without painting the team into a corner.
• Experience helping define technical standards or practices adopted beyond your immediate team.
• A track record of shaping technical direction more broadly across an organization, with influence extending beyond a single team or domain.

Travel Required

We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 10% of travel to be successful. We meet as a team for project kicks offs and as a company annually. These in-person meetings are crucial to building a product, team, and culture we all can be proud of.

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: $213,000 - $273,000. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.
• All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options.
• Perks of Horizon3.ai: Inclusive Team, Growth Opportunities, Innovative Culture, Hybrid & Remote Work, Competitive Compensation.

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.