Staff Software Engineer

Proofpoint; Belfast; On-site; GBP 75,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading cybersecurity company is seeking a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer to join their Platform Engineering team in Belfast. This role involves designing and maintaining systems that support petabyte-scale operations, requiring advanced technical expertise in distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, and team collaboration.

Benefits

Best workplace awards

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in software engineering.
• Significant experience on infrastructure or platform teams.
• Proven ability to design and operate petabyte-scale systems.

Responsibilities

• Architect and maintain scalable, fault-tolerant systems for petabyte-scale workloads.
• Lead development of RESTful APIs and improve internal platform infrastructure.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement best practices.

Skills

Java

Python

Go

Kotlin

Scala

Kubernetes

Apache Kafka

Cassandra

Terraform

Puppet

Job description

It's fun to work in a company where people truly BELIEVE in what they're doing!

We're committed to bringing passion and customer focus to the business.

Corporate Overview
Proofpoint is a leading cybersecurity company protecting organizations’ greatest assets and biggest risks: vulnerabilities in people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber-attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 1000, rely on Proofpoint for people-centric security and compliance solutions mitigating their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web.

We are singularly devoted to helping our customers protect their greatest assets and biggest security risk: their people. That’s why we’re a leader in next-generation cybersecurity. Protection Starts with People. Proofpoint.

The Role
We are looking for a highly experienced Staff Software Engineer to join our Platform Engineering team. This role is focused on building and scaling the foundational infrastructure and services that power our internal engineering ecosystem.

As a senior individual contributor, you’ll be instrumental in designing, developing, and maintaining petabyte-scale production platforms with a strong emphasis on resilience, performance, and developer experience. You'll work on distributed systems, deployment infrastructure, and internal service frameworks, enabling teams across the organization to deliver with speed, security, and reliability.

Your day-to-day
• Architect, build, and maintain scalable, fault-tolerant systems that support petabyte-scale workloads in production
• Lead development of RESTful APIs using Java or similar high-performance languages (e.g., Go, Kotlin, Scala)
• Contribute to the evolution of our internal platform by improving core infrastructure components and abstractions
• Design and optimize data pipelines and backend systems leveraging distributed technologies like Apache Kafka and Cassandra
• Drive platform modernization through Kubernetes-based deployments and configuration management using tools like Puppe
• Champion best practices in CI/CD, observability, security, and cloud-native architecture
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to understand their needs and deliver reusable, scalable solutions
• Mentor other engineers, review design documents and code, and provide leadership in solving complex technical challenges
• Own the operational health of platform services, including reliability, uptime, and on-call rotations.

What you bring to the team
• 12+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant time spent on infrastructure or platform teams
• Proven track record of designing and operating petabyte-scale systems in production environments
• Deep experience with Java and working knowledge of other programming languages such as Python, Go or Scala
• Strong understanding and hands-on experience with RESTful service design and implementation
• Solid background in distributed systems and experience with technologies like Kafka, Cassandra, or equivalents
• Proficiency with Kubernetes (K8s), Terraform and Puppet, or similar deployment and configuration management tools
• Familiarity with AWS, Azure (preferred) or other public cloud ecosystems; understanding of cloud-native patterns and cost-aware design
• Experience with system monitoring, logging, and alerting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills with the ability to influence at multiple levels.

Nice to Have
• Experience building internal developer platforms or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings
• Contributions to open-source tools and frameworks in the infrastructure or backend ecosystem. * Exposure to security best practices and compliance considerations in large-scale environments

Why Proofpoint
Protecting people is at the heart of our award-winning lineup of cybersecurity solutions, and the people who work here are the key to our success. We’re a customer-focused and a driven-to-win organization with leading-edge products. We are an inclusive, diverse, multinational company that believes in culture fit, but more importantly ‘culture-add’, and we strongly encourage people from all walks of life to apply.

We believe in hiring the best and the brightest to help cultivate our culture of collaboration and appreciation. Apply today and explore your future at Proofpoint! #LifeAtProofpoint

#LI-CB1

If you like wild growth and working with happy, enthusiastic over-achievers, you'll enjoy your career with us!

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.

Proofpoint thrives on the invaluable contributions of our diverse workforce, which encompasses a kaleidoscope of lived experiences, thoughts, perspectives, and professional expertise. We attribute much of our success to our people, who are at the core of our organization and embody our people-centric ethos.

Disrupting the Status Quo

We hire the most innovative minds globally to safeguard our customers’ sensitive data and intellectual property. Our talented workforce develops and leverages our advanced technology, combining their expertise to provide comprehensive protection against threat actors and mitigate the risks posed by both malicious and negligent employees.

Making a Difference

Cyberattacks have the potential to disrupt access to vital resources such as energy, water, transportation, healthcare, and financial services. At Proofpoint, our dedicated team works tirelessly to ensure world-class cyber resilience, protecting approximately 8,000 enterprise customers worldwide.

Our Commitment

We are committed to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. We work every day to ensure that our employees feel that they are in a community that celebrates their unique identity, cultivates their sense of belonging, and invests in their professional growth. We have 9 employee-led employee inclusion groups which help support both employees and our organization by providing opportunities to network, discuss career and cultural development and uplift the corporate culture to create a more inclusive workplace.

About Us

At Proofpoint, we have a passion for protecting people, data, and brands from today’s advanced threats and compliance risks. We hire the best people in the business to:

• Build and enhance our proven security platform
• Blend innovation and speed in a constantly evolving cloud architecture
• Analyze new threats and offer deep insight through data-driven intel
• Collaborate with customers to help solve their toughest security challenges

We are singularly devoted to helping our customers protect what matters most. That’s why we’re a leader in next-generation cybersecurity—and why more than half of the Fortune 100 trust us as a security partner.

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.