Software Engineer

Praetorian; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 80,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

High-performance culture

Opportunities for mentorship

Exposure to cutting-edge technology

Job summary

A leading cybersecurity firm in Austin, Texas, is seeking a Software Engineer to enhance their Praetorian Guard platform. This role involves building features from back-end to front-end, ensuring clean and scalable code. The ideal candidate has a degree in a related field and 0-5 years of experience, preferably in cybersecurity or tech startups. You will collaborate with security engineers to design systems that address real-world vulnerabilities and teach the team while raising technical standards. Join a culture focused on high performance and deep ownership.

Qualifications

• 0–5 years of experience in cybersecurity, startups, or tech companies.
• Ability to write idiomatic and production-ready Go code.
• Understanding of distributed systems and their complexities.
• Passion for user experience with a focus on maintainable code.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship features for the Praetorian Guard platform.
• Design systems for attack surface management at scale.
• Translate vulnerability findings into platform capabilities.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to team learning.

Skills

Go programming

Distributed systems

Serverless architectures

API design

UI development

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or Physics

Job description

We Are Praetorian

Praetorian is defined by raw intensity, fearless candor, and a relentless drive. This is who we are.

We are looking for high-performing, mission-aligned individuals. We prioritize performance over politics and purpose over transaction. This environment is built for those who seek ownership and impact. Is Praetorian the right fit for you? If you are someone who obsesses over the problem, defaults to open communication, and wants to work with a team that refuses to accept mediocrity—then you have found your home.

The Mission

Praetorian is an expert-driven offensive security company. Our mission is to prevent breaches before they occur. We help organizations shift from an "assume breach" mentality to adopting offensive security as a core strategy of prevention. We don't just find bugs; we solve the root cause. We are building a future without compromise, and we need people who run toward the fire.

Who We Are Looking For

We are looking for a Software Engineer who operates with clear ownership. You're not just filling a seat. You're setting the standard. You believe great execution brings strategy to life.

How You Operate

You bring mission-driven grit to every challenge, running toward hard problems rather than away from them. You prioritize customer outcomes over internal processes. You choose truth and clarity over performative politeness. We look for builders with a bias for action – people who own the fix when things break, share credit with the team, and possess the intellectual humility to care more about getting to the right answer than being right.

What You Will Own

• Build and ship features across the full stack of the Praetorian Guard platform, from the Go serverless backend to a React frontend used by security teams daily. Own it from design through production operations.
• Take accountability to overcome the challenges in developing and operating the Praetorian Guard platform.
• Write code that is clear, tested, and built to last. Push the team's engineering standards forward through code review, technical proposals, and leading by example.
• Work directly with offensive security engineers to translate real‑world vulnerability findings into platform capabilities. Your code doesn't just run, it scales the impact of every security engineer on the team.
• Design systems that handle the complexity of attack surface management at scale: graph databases modeling millions of asset relationships, queue‑based architectures processing continuous security scans, and real‑time interfaces that make complex data actionable.

What You Bring

• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or Physics, backed by 0–5 years of experience in cybersecurity, startups, or tech companies.
• You write Go that is idiomatic, testable, and production‑ready. You understand serverless architectures, API design, and working with databases under real load.
• Reason about distributed systems, concurrency, failure modes, and data flow. Think about what happens when a function is called ten thousand times a second.
• Apply software engineering principles to guide AI agents to build responsive, performant UI in maintainable code. Care deeply about the final user experience and iterate until it is right.
• Show side projects, open‑source contributions, or technical writing that demonstrates you build because you want to, not because someone told you to. Ship something real outside of a classroom.

If This Position Is Wildly Successful, In One Year You Will Have:

• Shipped major features across the Guard platform that security teams rely on daily.
• Built infrastructure that scales, such as queue‑based scanning pipelines, graph query optimization, and AWS serverless architecture.
• Written code that teammates trust: clean and well‑tested. Your pull requests raise the bar and your reviews make the people around you sharper.
• Integrated AI tooling into your development workflow, moving fast in complex systems without sacrificing quality or understanding.
• Turned high‑level requests into practical features that real customers rely on and generate delights.
• Demonstrated ownership across the full stack, from CloudFormation templates and Lambda handlers to React components and Playwright tests, without being told to, because the problem demanded it.
• Closed the gap between field findings and platform capabilities by partnering with offensive security engineers to translate recurring vulnerability patterns into automated detections that multiply the team's impact.
• Contributed to Praetorian's engineering culture through technical blog posts, internal knowledge sharing, or open‑source contributions that reflect the depth of what we're building.
• Mentored junior engineers and contributed to a culture of continuous learning, raising the technical floor across the team through your example and investment in the people around you.

Why Praetorian?

• We offer a culture built on high performance and deep ownership.
• Work alongside the top 1% of the industry—composed exclusively of high performers who raise the bar.
• We are defined by action, grit, and uncompromising transparency. We move fast, take on hard problems, and choose clarity over comfort because that's how meaningful work gets done.
• Your work directly powers the platform that protects the world's most critical organizations.

Want to go deeper? Explore our New Hire Survival Guide to dive into Praetorian's mission, vision, values, and culture.