Staff Software Engineer

About Us:   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:  Bold in how we dream and innovate Responsive to feedback, challenges and opportunities Accountable for results and best in class outcomes Visionary in future focused problem-solving Exceptional in execution and impact Staff Software Engineer, Capture & Intelligence Platform Role Summary 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. Required Experience 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. Why Proofpoint? 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 Career success on your terms Flexible work environment Annual wellness and community outreach days Always on recognition for your contributions Global collaboration and networking opportunities   Our Culture: Our culture is rooted in values that inspire belonging, empower purpose and drive success-every day, for everyone. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. If you need accommodation during the application or interview process, please reach out to accessibility@proofpoint.com.   How to Apply Interested? Submit your application along with any supporting information- we can’t wait to hear from you! 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