Staff Software Engineer

Nuclei is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help lead the evolution of our Capture and Intelligence platform inside Proofpoint. This person will work in a Python-first monorepo that powers communications capture, compliance workflows, event processing, AI classification, agentic investigations, and emerging decision-governance products. This is a role for someone who can operate in real production complexity: external APIs, OAuth flows, rate limits, async job orchestration, Postgres data modeling, customer-specific edge cases, LLM-powered intelligence, and enterprise-grade reliability. The ideal candidate is not just a strong coder, but a technical owner who can bring clarity to ambiguous systems and raise the quality of everyone around them.

What You'll Own

• Design, build, and maintain critical backend systems across capture services, shared platform models, event pipelines, async workers, APIs, and AI/intelligence workflows.

• Lead technical execution for ambiguous, high-impact projects that span multiple services or domains.

• Work directly in systems that ingest and normalize communications data from platforms like Microsoft, Slack, Zoom, Google, Bloomberg, Salesforce, Proofpoint Archive, and other enterprise sources.

• Contribute to AI-native product surfaces including LLM classification, agent runs, investigator workflows, telemetry, evaluations, and future decision-tracing capabilities. Improve reliability, observability, testability, and operational maturity across a fast-moving production codebase.

• Debug difficult customer and production issues involving data correctness, API behavior, async failures, scale, performance, and compliance-sensitive workflows.

• Mentor engineers through design review, code review, pairing, technical writing, and clear architectural judgment.

• What Success Looks Like

• You quickly become one of the people others trust for the hardest technical questions.

• You can read unfamiliar parts of the codebase, understand the domain model, and make safe changes without needing perfect documentation.

• You ship pragmatic, well-tested code while also improving the underlying system design.

• You help the team move faster without creating avoidable operational risk.

• You make ambiguous projects feel tractable by decomposing them into clear technical decisions.

• You balance product urgency, customer needs, engineering quality, and long-term maintainability.

• You are comfortable working close to production and close to customers when needed.

Technical Environment

• Python 3.12, Pydantic, psycopg/Postgres, SQL, async job systems, AWS, SQS/Lambda-style orchestration, Docker/local mock environments.

• Shared platform models for accounts, feeds, events, jobs, schedules, agents, investigations, decisions, archives, and integrations.

• Capture services organized around API clients, auth flows, data normalization, sync orchestration, retries, and backfills.

• AI systems using structured LLM outputs, evals, token budgets, embeddings/vector search, vLLM/local models, and agent workflows.

• React/TypeScript UI surfaces for settings, agent runs, investigations, decisions, and operational workflows.

• 8+ years building production backend or full-stack systems, with Staff-level ownership of large or ambiguous technical areas.

• Strong Python experience, including typed code, data modeling, testing, and production debugging.

• Deep experience with relational databases, especially Postgres, schema design, query performance, migrations, and data correctness.

• Experience building distributed or asynchronous systems involving queues, workers, retries, idempotency, rate limits, and failure recovery.

• Strong API integration experience, ideally with OAuth, webhooks, pagination, throttling, vendor-specific edge cases, and long-running backfills.

At Proofpoint, we believe that an exceptional career experience includes a comprehensive compensation and benefits package. Here are just a few reasons you'll love working with us:

• Competitive compensation

• Comprehensive benefits, Consistent with Proofpoint values and applicable law, we provide the following information to promote pay transparency and equity. Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several U.S. geographic markets, and we pay differently based on those defined markets as set out below. Pay within these ranges varies and depends on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The actual offer will be based on the individual candidate. The range provided may represent a candidate range and may not reflect the full range for an individual tenured employee. This role may be eligible for variable compensation and/or equity. We offer a competitive benefits package, including flexible time off, a comprehensive well-being program with two paid Wellbeing Days and two paid Volunteer Days per year, plus a three-week Work from Anywhere option.

Base Pay Ranges:

SF Bay Area, New York City Metro Area:

Base Pay Range: 200,300.00 - 293,810.00 USD

California (excludes SF Bay Area), Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington DC Metro, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, Washington, Virginia, and Alaska:

Base Pay Range: 167,300.00 - 245,355.00 USD

All other cities and states excluding those listed above:

Base Pay Range: 152,900.00 - 224,235.00 USD

Proofpoint is a global leader in human- and agent-centric cybersecurity. We protect how people, data, and AI agents connect across email, cloud, and collaboration tools. Over 80 of the Fortune 100, 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations trust Proofpoint to stop threats, prevent data loss, and build resilience across their people and AI workflows. Our mission is simple: safeguard the digital world and empower people to work securely and confidently. Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people. How We Work: At Proofpoint you'll be part of a global team that breaks barriers to redefine cybersecurity guided by our BRAVE core values, Proofpoint has been honored with six Best Places to Work Awards in 2024 by workplace culture leader Comparably, including Best Company Career Growth, Best Company Outlook, Best Global Culture, Best Engineering Teams, Best Sales Teams, and Best HR Teams. We are the leader in human-centric cybersecurity. Half a million customers, including 87 of the Fortune 100, rely on Proofpoint to protect their organizations. We're driven by a mission to stay ahead of bad actors and safeguard the digital world. Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people. Our BRAVE Values: At Proofpoint, we are BRAVE in everything we do, and our values aren't just words-they shape how we work, collaborate, and grow. We seek people who are bold enough to challenge the status quo, responsive in the face of ever-evolving threats, and accountable for delivering real impact. We value those with a visionary mindset who anticipate what's next and push cybersecurity forward, and we celebrate exceptional execution that ensures we continue to defend data and protect people. Proofpoint is an equal opportunity employer, we hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status or disability. Find your network, your allies, and your biggest fans. We know that work is simply better when you're surrounded by people who inspire you-who share ideas, cheer you on, and genuinely want to see you succeed. That's why we offer social circles, sponsored networks, and connection points across teams and time zones-to help you find your people, build your community, and thrive together. This isn't just a job-it's a mission to protect people and defend data in a world that never slows down. We're building the future of human-centric cybersecurity, and that future belongs to all of us. We take ownership, move fast, and hold ourselves accountable-because that's what it takes to stay ahead. And we do it together, winning as one. Be empowered to reach your full potential through meaningful challenges and personalized support-designed around you and your goals. Whether you're growing as a leader or leveling up from great to exceptional as an individual contributor, we're here to help you get there. Proofpoint is an equal opportunity employer, we hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status or disability.