Senior Distributed Systems Engineer

Company Background 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. Role Summary: We’re looking to hire a Senior Distributed Systems Engineer to build scalable services and APIs that process vast amounts of data and make them highly available, providing direct value to customers and other parts of our organization. Censys operates distributed infrastructure for Internet-wide scanning and you will help us continue our mission to build the highest quality datasets and APIs that lead to insights about the Internet at large. At Censys, we believe in working iteratively, but we’re always thinking about the big picture. We’re expanding our data platform to enable future products and features to make the Internet an explainable map, providing additional, rich context, and showing complex relationships. We’re looking for someone with an ownership mindset, is curious, can provide mentorship, and has a collaborative spirit for our mission. What You’ll Do: Build large scale, real-time streaming services and applications which leverage our massive datasets to power internal APIs and external applications. Own the design and development phases of backend services and APIs that power the data platform that is our Internet Map. Own planning activities to ensure we’re building the right things, by collaborating with engineering and product teams. Leverage your experience of architecture and design to build various parts of the system, including components like: messaging queues, databases, ingestion pipelines, caching layers, and services that run in the cloud or on-prem. Skills You Have: 5+ years of software engineering experience writing distributed systems (i.e. data ingestion pipelines, databases, services) Experience with object-oriented programming - we use Go Experience with at least one cloud provider, like: AWS, Azure, or GCP Experience with message queue technologies, like: AWS Kinesis , Google Pub/Sub, Kafka, or other Proficient with databases, like: BigTable, Cloud Spanner, HBase, Cassandra, or other Proficient at building scalable, distributed systems Know when and where to utilize AI Ability to write understandable, testable code with an eye towards maintainability Possess strong communication skills and can explain technical concepts to other engineers and product managers. Open to using AI to amplify their skills and strengthen their work - demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact. Things that make you stand out: Familiarity with gRPC or REST. Familiarity with data serialization technologies, like: Protobuf, MessagePack, etc. Experience building, deploying, and maintaining containerized services in a Kubernetes. Knowledge of how DNS works and is used in practice An understanding of how the Internet works; how machines and services communicate using defined protocols / standards. For high cost of living areas (San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and the New York City metro), the expected salary range for this position is $157,000 - $188,000 + bonus eligibility and equity. For all other locations, the expected salary range for this position is $137,000 - $175,000 + 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 rang