Censys knows the internet and cloud better than anyone else. Attack Surface Management provides customers with an attacker-centric view of all externally facing internet and cloud to extend visibility, prioritize, and remediate the most critical risk exposures that will actually lead to a breach. Our daily IPv4 scans and the world’s largest SSL/TLS Certificate database enables customers with the most accurate and continuously updated attack surfaces. Enterprise security teams leverage Censys to keep pace with the speed of the business and gain an advantage on the rapidly evolving cyber-attack threats.

 

Role Summary:

We’re looking to hire a Distributed Systems Engineer to build highly-available and scalable, data-driven services that provide value directly to customers and across our organization. Censys operates distributed infrastructure for Internet-wide scanning, bulk DNS resolution, and X.509 certificate ingestion: your job will be to go below the surface of our data, and help us build the highest quality datasets and APIs.

At Censys, we believe in working iteratively, but we’re always thinking about the big picture. We’re building a platform that enables fast development of future products, and integration with new data collection methods. You'd be great for this position if you're someone who considers not just initial development, but ongoing maintenance and monitoring. You consider delivery and developer experience, and everything you do can be built upon in the future by others.



Role Responsibilities:

  • Design and build services that power existing and future products at Censys by continuing to improve and expand our Internet Map.
  • Build and extend large scale, real-time streaming services and applications which leverage our massive datasets to power internal product APIs and external applications.
  • Leverage a multitude of software architectures and techniques, including messaging queues, eventual consistency semantics, distributed locking, clustering, CQRS, and others.
  • Interface with a polyglot codebase, including working with existing Scala and Go applications.

 

Required Qualifications:

  • 3+ years of software engineering experience writing distributed and streaming applications.
  • Familiarity with functional programming and reactive programming techniques,
  • Familiarity with object-oriented programming techniques and languages such as Go, Rust, or Python.
  • Experience with message queue technologies such as Kafka, Google Pub/Sub, AWS Kinesis and delivery semantics such as Exactly-once and At-least once.
  • Proficiency with distributed databases, such as BigTable, Cloud Spanner, HBase, Cassandra, with an understanding of trade-offs on consistency, durability, and replication of using such technologies.
  • Ability to build horizontally scalable systems, with a high degree of availability and fault-tolerance leveraging techniques such as distributed locking, load-shedding, etc.
  • Design automated solutions for building, testing, monitoring, and deploying data streaming pipelines in a continuous integration environment 
  • Interested in solving problems, not completing tasks
  • Ability to write understandable, testable code with an eye towards maintainability
  • Have strong communication skills and can explain complex technical concepts to other engineers, designers, and product managers.

 

Preferred Qualifications: 

  • Familiarity and comfort working in a Linux based environment.
  • Familiarity with a service-oriented architecture using gRPC or REST to coordinate and communicate between services and systems.
  • Familiarity with data serialization technologies such as Protobuf, MessagePack, etc.
  • Experience building, deploying, and maintaining containerized services in a Kubernetes based environment. 
  • Experience working with cloud-native technologies and environments, such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
  • Collaborate and communicate well with other engineers working on related systems.
  • Enjoy technical architecture discussions and want to drive technical decisions within your team.
  • Continually improve skills, technical approaches, and familiarity with new technologies to help contribute to the success of the team.

 

Our target salary range for this role is between $130,000 USD and $180,000 USD + bonus eligibility and equity.

Our roots are in Ann Arbor, Michigan with location hubs in Seattle, the Bay Area, Washington D.C., and Dublin, Ireland. Our innovation is fueled by the team’s global perspectives and diverse backgrounds. 

Don't meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they feel they meet every qualification. At Censys we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace - so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every listed requirement in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be exactly who we need to fill this role or others! 

We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Censys is an equal opportunity employer.

Apply for this Job

* Required
resume chosen  
(File types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf)
cover_letter chosen  
(File types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf)


Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Censys’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.


Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.


Our system has flagged this application as potentially being associated with bot traffic. Please turn off any VPNs, clear your browser cache and cookies, or try submitting your application in a different browser. If this issue persists, please reach out to our support team via our help center.
Please complete the reCAPTCHA above.