Staff Backend Engineer, Exposure Management

About the role

Censys is looking for a senior backend engineer to lead the evolution of our Exposure Management product. You will guide the technical direction for services that map the internet and help organizations understand their digital footprint. This role involves bridging existing systems with new platform development, ensuring high availability, and mentoring team members.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Provide technical leadership for the Exposure Management team, shaping architecture and system design.
• Manage the transition of legacy Attack Surface Management functions to the new Exposure Management platform.
• Take full responsibility for backend services, addressing complex legacy behaviors and ensuring integration with the new platform.
• Coordinate technical efforts across shared systems to enhance scalability and efficiency.
• Foster technical excellence through guidance and establishing high engineering standards.
• Explore and apply AI and LLM technologies to improve engineering processes and platform capabilities.

Requirements

• A proactive approach to problem-solving, especially with complex legacy code.
• A strong understanding of internet protocols and technologies, including WHOIS, Certificate Subject Alternative Names (SANs), and DNS.
• A minimum of 10 years of experience in software engineering.
• At least 5 years of experience working with Go.
• Proven experience building horizontally scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant distributed systems.
• Experience with service-oriented architectures and their operational components, such as gRPC/REST, microservices, GCP, and Kubernetes.
• Ability to quickly understand and work with unfamiliar legacy systems, reverse-engineer behavior, and resolve issues with minimal disruption.
• Strong communication and technical design skills, including the ability to document architectures and drive solutions from conception to completion.
• Curiosity and a willingness to responsibly use AI to enhance work and efficiency.

Nice to have

• Primary backend development experience in Go.
• Experience integrating AI and LLM technologies into engineering workflows.
• Experience leading product or platform migrations while managing existing customer commitments.
• Familiarity with microservice designs using GCP PubSub or similar event-driven systems.
• A commitment to building maintainable software, including test coverage, linters, and complexity checks.

Skills & tools

• Go
• gRPC/REST
• Microservices
• GCP
• Kubernetes
• Pub/Sub

Practical notes

• Salary range for high cost of living areas (San Francisco Bay, New York City, Seattle): $198,000 - $233,000 USD.
• Salary range for other US locations: $172,000 - $216,000 USD.
• Compensation includes bonus eligibility and equity.
• Benefits package includes equity, health, dental, vision, retirement with company contribution, parental leave, mental health and wellness benefits, flexible PTO, and professional development stipend.
• Candidates requiring accommodation for the application or interview process should contact their recruiter.
• All video interviews require cameras to be on.
• In-person onboarding at HQ in Ann Arbor is required for new hires.
• Censys is an equal opportunity employer.
• Censys is not currently engaging with third-party agencies for this role.

About the company

Censys is a security company that provides internet intelligence through continuous scanning of the global internet. The technology originated from research conducted at the University of Michigan. The founding team developed the initial scanning infrastructure in 2015. The company was established to commercialize this approach to asset discovery and risk management. The platform maps and monitors hosts, services, and certificates across the public attack surface. Security teams use this data to identify unknown assets, track vulnerability exposure, and respond to emerging threats. The scanning engine updates its view of the internet on a frequent basis. This persistence allows customers to detect changes in their external footprint quickly. As of 2023 the service supported 350,000 registered users. The community includes researchers, analysts, and enterprise security programs. The data is accessible through a search interface, an API, and integrated workflow tools. The company focuses on making internet-wide visibility practical for defensive operations. Its datasets are cited in industry reports and academic studies. The team continues to expand collection coverage and analysis capabilities. The goal remains helping organizations understand what is exposed to the internet at any given moment.