Senior Backend Engineer, Licensing

Get to Know Us

Horizon3 is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of 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.

We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers & operators, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools and false positives, resulting in alert fatigue, blind spots, "checkbox” security culture, cybersecurity skills shortage, and the long lead time and expense of hiring outside consultants. Collectively, we are a team of learn it alls, committed to a culture of respect, collaboration, ownership, and results.

What You’ll Do

As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Licensing, Usage & Entitlements team, you’ll build the services that determine what NodeZero customers have purchased, which capabilities are enabled for them, and how usage limits apply. You’ll own meaningful work across product packaging, entitlements, and usage workflows for direct and partner accounts. Because these systems affect customer access and downstream product behavior, you’ll focus on correctness, clear service contracts, and reliable operation. You’ll collaborate with Product and adjacent engineering teams to resolve edge cases and deliver changes safely to production.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain services and APIs that represent customer purchases, product packaging, enabled capabilities, and usage limits.

• Own features from technical design through implementation, testing, rollout, and production operation, with attention to data correctness and customer impact.

• Build and evolve entitlement and usage workflows that work consistently across direct and MSP/MSPP account models.

• Partner with Product and adjacent teams to define interfaces and resolve edge cases in licensing, packaging, and feature access.

• Improve tests, observability, design documentation, runbooks, and support playbooks for business-critical services.

• Investigate production issues across service boundaries and implement durable fixes.

• Review code and design proposals and share context with other engineers.

What You’ll Bring

• Strong ownership and judgment when working on customer-impacting workflows where correctness matters.

• Ability to reason through edge cases and communicate implementation risks and tradeoffs clearly.

• A quality-minded approach to testing, data integrity, production support, and technical documentation.

• Effective collaboration with Product and engineering partners; willingness to share knowledge and support teammates.

• Ability to manage concurrent work while keeping stakeholders informed.

Required Education / Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating backend software.

• Experience with a modern backend language such as Python, Go, Java, or TypeScript.

• Experience designing APIs and data models for business-critical services or customer-facing workflows.

• Strong SQL and relational database experience, including data integrity and production troubleshooting.

• Experience with cloud-hosted services and containerized applications such as Docker; familiarity with Kubernetes or a comparable orchestrator.

• Strong foundation in testing, observability, and ownership of production services.

What Sets You Apart?

• Experience with licensing, entitlements, subscriptions, usage metering, billing-adjacent workflows, or feature access controls.

• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS, account hierarchies, RBAC, or partner account models.

• Experience with Python or Go, PostgreSQL, GraphQL, AWS, and event-driven or distributed systems.

• Familiarity with Kafka or other event-streaming systems, workflow tools such as Temporal or Prefect, and production observability platforms.

Travel Required

We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 5% of travel to be successful.

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 $199,000 - $235,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.

• Additional compensation: All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options.

Perks of Horizon3

• Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.

• Growth Opportunities: Be part of a dynamic and growing team with numerous career development opportunities.

• Innovative Culture: Work in a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.

• Hybrid & Remote Work: We embrace a mix of remote and hybrid work models depending on role and location, including our Chicago office, where some roles require regular in-office presence.

• Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive salary, equity and benefits. Our benefits include health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave.

You Belong Here

Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, hair length or any other legally protected status by law.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion means we strive to attract, develop, and retain a workforce that reflects the varied communities we serve. We believe that diverse perspectives drive innovation and strengthen our ability to create cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. At Horizon3, every team member is valued and supported in an environment that encourages personal and professional growth.

We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, and we encourage all qualified individuals to apply. Come be a part of Horizon3, where your unique contributions are recognized, and your potential is limitless.

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.

Application Note

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.