Censys’ mission is to be the one place to understand everything on the internet. Frustrated by the lack of trustworthy Internet intelligence, we set out to create the industry’s most comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date map of the Internet. Today, Censys delivers real-time Internet intelligence and actionable threat insights to global governments, over 50% of the Fortune 500, and leading threat intelligence providers worldwide.
Location: This position is remote within the United States or Canada.
Role Summary:
Censys is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join our Exposure Management team. Our Exposure Management solution is a growth product for Censys and depends on a world-class backend architecture to deliver real-time, high-fidelity visibility to our customers. We’re looking for an engineer who can design, build, and extend large-scale, real-time backend services that leverage Censys’ massive datasets to power internal product APIs and external customer-facing applications.
This role requires someone who is comfortable owning backend services end-to-end, integrating data from multiple internal systems, and operating in production environments where reliability, observability, and correctness matter. As with all roles at Censys, we expect a strong customer focus, a collaborative mindset, and a desire to continuously learn and improve both our systems and our team.
What You’ll Do:
- Design, build, and own backend APIs and gRPC services that integrate data from multiple internal teams and systems in a clean, well-architected manner
- Build and evolve real-time and near–real-time backend services and data pipelines that power Exposure Management and Attack Surface Management products
- Leverage AI and LLMs to enhance automation, accelerate development workflows, and improve customer-facing intelligence
- Partner closely with Product and other Engineering teams to prioritize features, influence the Exposure Management roadmap, and deliver customer value on tight timelines
- Provide technical leadership through design reviews, mentorship, and setting a high bar for code quality, performance, and operational reliability
- Design and maintain automated CI/CD workflows, including testing, monitoring, alerting, and deployment, to ensure services are production-ready and observable
What You’ll Bring:
- A positive attitude biased towards action and iterative problem solving, learning as we grow every step of the way.
- 5+ years of experience in software engineering.
- 3+ years of experience with Golang.
- Experience designing and consuming REST and gRPC APIs in service-oriented or microservice architectures
- Strong distributed systems fundamentals, including experience building horizontally scalable, fault-tolerant systems
- The ability to thoughtfully participate in technical discussions and drive towards data-driven decisions amidst ambiguity and competing priorities.
- Strong communication and documentation skills. Explaining complex technical concepts to other engineers, designers, salespeople, and content marketers is no problem for you.
What Sets You Apart:
- Strong interest in harnessing AI and LLM tools as a force multiplier - using it to code smarter, iterate faster boosting productivity and enhancing product capabilities
- You have experience with microservice-based designs with GCP PubSub, etc, and know their tradeoffs.
- Experience building, deploying, and maintaining containerized services in a Kubernetes based environment.
- You understand the value of building maintainable software. Some of your first tasks when building a new service are ensuring test coverage enforced by CI, adding linters, and adding code complexity checks. You enjoy a good abstraction, and promote established design patterns, but also know when to think outside the box.
- A deep understanding of how the Internet works. For example, WHOIS, Certificate Subject Alternative Names (SANs), and DNS record types should not be foreign to you.
For high cost of living areas (San Francisco Bay, New York City, and Seattle), the expected salary range for this position is $165,000 USD - $188,000, plus bonus eligibility and equity.
For other US locations, the expected salary range for this position is $135,000 USD - $155,000 USD, plus bonus eligibility and equity.
Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), market demands, and specific work location. The listed range is a guideline, and the range for this role may be modified. For roles that are available to be filled remotely, the pay range is localized according to employee work location by a factor of between 83% and 100% of range. Please discuss your specific work location with your recruiter for more information.
Censys offers a competitive benefits package to employees, including equity, health, dental & vision coverage, retirement with company contribution, parental leave, mental health & wellness benefits, flexible PTO, and a professional development stipend. Censys also offers sales incentive pay for most sales roles and an annual bonus plan for eligible non-sales roles. Censys’s compensation and benefits are subject to change and may be modified in the future. Please see our careers page for more details.
We will work to ensure individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to apply for a role, participate in the interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. If you require accommodation, please reach out to your recruiter. These modifications enable an individual with a disability to have an equal opportunity not only to get a job, but successfully perform their job tasks to the same extent as people without disabilities.
To ensure the integrity of our hiring process and facilitate a more personal connection, we require all candidates to keep their cameras on during video interviews. Additionally, if hired, we would love to bring you to our HQ in Ann Arbor for in-person onboarding.
By applying for this job, the candidate acknowledges and agrees that any personal data contained in their application or supporting materials will be processed in accordance with our Censys Privacy Policy.
Our roots are in Ann Arbor, Michigan and our innovation is fueled by the team’s global perspectives. For this role, we are open to remote employees across the continental US. We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Censys is an equal opportunity employer.
Note to external recruiters/agencies: We are not currently engaging with third-party agencies for this role and will not accept unsolicited outreach. We kindly ask that you do not submit resumes or candidate profiles to our team.
California Privacy Rights Notice
Pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), we are providing you with notice that we collect personal information from job applicants for business purposes, including evaluating your candidacy for employment, conducting interviews, and, if applicable, completing the hiring process. The categories of information we may collect include identifiers (such as name and contact information), professional or employment-related information (such as work history, education, and references), and other information you provide in your application. We do not sell or share your personal information. For more information on how we use and protect your personal information, and your rights under the CCPA, please refer to our Privacy Policy.
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What We Do
At Censys we believe that cybersecurity is critical to the future of our global economy. And in order to evolve cybersecurity defenses, both the public and private sector need access to best-in-class intelligence data. By arming our customers with the visibility and insights that they need to protect against critical threats, Censys provides the intelligence needed to bolster cybersecurity capabilities worldwide.
Why Work With Us
We are a rapidly growing cyber security startup based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our innovation is fueled by the team’s global perspectives and diverse backgrounds. We welcome healthy debate, constructive conversations, and outside-the-box thinking to ensure we are moving fast, learning things, and iterating quickly.
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