Staff Software Engineer (WAF)

Location: US, Remote; up to 10% travel may be required.

Base salary: $225,000–$265,000 annually, plus equity for full-time employees.

Company

hirify.global develops NodeZero, a cybersecurity platform for autonomous penetration testing and security assessment across internal, external, cloud, and hybrid-cloud environments.

What you will do

• Lead the technical direction of the Web Application Firewall workstream from problem definition and architecture through delivery, operation, and iteration.
• Design and build reliable integrations with WAF management platforms and APIs, accounting for vendor-specific policy models and behavior.
• Define correctness checks and safe remediation guidance that protect validated attack paths while preserving legitimate traffic and service availability.
• Build durable, observable workflows for long-running or resumable operations, including retries, idempotency, timeouts, partial failure handling, validation, recovery, staged rollout, and rollback.
• Contribute production code, lead design and code reviews, and improve quality, testing, security, and operational readiness.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, AI research, and Attack teams; mentor engineers and communicate risks and tradeoffs through clear technical decisions.

Requirements

• Staff-level technical leadership with 8+ years leading technical work at Staff, Lead, or comparable scope, including architecture, implementation, and cross-team influence.
• Expert-level proficiency in large-scale Python software development and strong experience designing, shipping, and operating production backend systems.
• Working knowledge of WAF platforms and policy models, including AWS WAF, Cloudflare, F5, Imperva, FortiWeb, or ModSecurity/OWASP CRS; familiarity with rules, managed rule groups, request inspection, and blocking behavior.
• Proficiency in another modern backend language such as Go, Rust, or a comparable language.
• Experience designing service-oriented systems, APIs, or integrations that handle failure and partial completion.
• Strong systems-design skills with sound tradeoffs across correctness, reliability, security, and maintainability.
• Ability to translate ambiguous product or customer problems into concrete technical plans and deliver outcomes with cross-functional partners.
• Clear technical writing and communication skills, including the ability to explain complex decisions to different audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience with API security, bot management, rate limiting, application security testing, DAST, pentesting, network firewalls, or segmentation.
• Experience integrating security or infrastructure platforms with varying APIs and policy models.
• Experience building security products that assess control coverage, validate attack paths, or produce remediation guidance.
• Experience designing safe automation affecting customer environments, including authorization, audit, validation, and recovery.
• Familiarity with cloud environments, containerization, and operating services at scale.
• Experience collaborating with Product, AI or applied research, or security practitioners to create customer-facing software.

Culture & Benefits

• Fully remote work with a collaborative, respectful culture focused on ownership and results; some company roles may use hybrid work and the Chicago office.
• Health, vision, and dental insurance for employees and families.
• Flexible vacation policy and generous parental leave.
• Career development opportunities, inclusive workplace practices, and equity for all full-time roles.
• Up to 10% travel may be required for the role.