Senior/Staff Developer Experience Engineer

Horizon3.ai · Remote (United States) · $199,750 - $270,000 USD · Posted 2026-09-25

Get to Know Us

Horizon3 is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find and fix and verify exploitable attack vectors before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZeroTM platform, delivers production-safe autonomous pentests and other key assessment operations that scale across the largest internal, external, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. NodeZero has been adopted by organizations of all sizes, from small educational institutions to government agencies and Global 100 enterprises. It is used by ITOps/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.

We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools, false positives resulting in alert fatigue, blind spots, "checkbox” security culture, cybersecurity skills shortage, and the long lead time and expense of hiring outside consultants. Collectively, we are a team of learn it alls, committed to a culture of respect, collaboration, ownership, and results.

About the Role --------------

We are looking for a Staff Developer Experience Engineer to help shape how Horizon3 engineers build, test, release, and operate software.

The Developer Experience team owns the foundations connecting local development to production delivery: developer tooling, CI/CD, build systems, container base images, artifact promotion, release gates, and approved agentic-development workflows. You will define technical direction, lead complex initiatives across engineering, and build reusable paths that improve delivery speed, quality, security, and confidence.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous problems, influencing across teams, and making the software lifecycle easier to use and operate.

What You’ll Do --------------

Developer Platform Strategy, Delivery & Operations

Define the architecture and roadmap for local development, repository tooling, CI/CD, build systems, and release workflows.

Lead high-impact initiatives across engineering that reduce manual coordination and standardize the path from code change to production.

Build reusable GitLab CI/CD templates, runner capabilities, developer workflows, test gates, artifact promotion, release manifests, and rollback paths.

Establish sustainable practices for shared container images, build performance, reproducibility, scanning, signing, provenance, and supply-chain security.

Improve developer workflow and delivery observability through useful measures of setup time, pipeline health, release performance, and adoption.

Partner with Platform, Security, QA, and feature teams to make delivery foundations reliable, secure, and easy to consume.

Technical Leadership & Enablement

Establish standards and paved paths for developer workflows, build and release engineering, and approved AI-assisted development.

Design safe agentic-development workflows that integrate with code review, testing, scanning, permissions, auditability, and Security requirements.

Turn repeated developer friction into reusable tooling, templates, documentation, migration guidance, and runbooks.

Mentor engineers, develop technical owners, and raise the engineering bar across Developer Experience and Horizon3.

Communicate complex technical decisions clearly and build alignment across Platform, Application Engineering, Data Engineering, Security, QA, Product, and Program Management.

Participate in design reviews, operational reviews, incident response, and continuous improvement.

What You’ll Bring -----------------

Required Qualifications

8+ years of experience in Developer Experience, Developer Productivity, Build/Release Engineering, Platform Engineering, SRE, DevOps, or software engineering with substantial tooling and delivery ownership.

Deep experience designing and operating CI/CD systems, preferably GitLab CI/CD and self-hosted runners.

Experience with container builds, Docker or OCI images, artifact repositories, and reproducible builds.

Strong understanding of Kubernetes-based development or delivery workflows.

Experience implementing automated tests, security checks, release gates, progressive delivery, and rollback.

Proficiency in Go and Python for automation, developer tooling, or platform services.

Strong understanding of software supply-chain security, dependencies, image vulnerabilities, provenance, secrets, and least privilege.

Demonstrated success leading complex initiatives across multiple teams and driving adoption of shared capabilities.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction without relying on formal authority.

Preferred Qualifications

Internal developer platform, paved-road, service-template, or developer-portal experience.

Shared language/runtime base images, image signing, SBOMs, or provenance-control experience.

GitLab Runner fleets, CI optimization, build caching, or multi-repository release-system experience.

Local Kubernetes, dev containers, Docker Compose, Orbstack, Skaffold, ArgoCD, or GitOps experience.

AI-assisted or agentic engineering workflow experience.

OpenTelemetry, Datadog, pipeline telemetry, or developer-productivity metrics experience.

Security-sensitive, regulated, or cybersecurity experience.

Our Developer Experience Stack ------------------------------

GitLab, GitLab CI/CD, and private runner fleets

Shared CI/CD templates and pipeline management

Docker/OCI images, artifact repositories, and shared base images

Kubernetes, EKS, Helm, Skaffold, and ArgoCD

AWS and cloud-native development environments

Go, Python, TypeScript, shell scripting, and repository tooling

OpenTelemetry, Datadog, and pipeline/deployment observability

Approved AI coding tools, including Claude Code for approved engineering use cases

Exact tool matches are less important than strong software-engineering fundamentals, platform judgment, empathy for developers, and a track record of improving delivery systems at scale.

What Success Looks Like -----------------------

Engineering teams adopt clear, reliable paved paths from local development through production.

Shared CI/CD, build, and release capabilities reduce friction and manual coordination.

The same validated artifact or commit moves predictably through environments.

Base images, build components, and delivery workflows are secure, current, traceable, and easy to consume.

Approved AI-assisted workflows improve productivity without bypassing review, testing, or security.

Developer Experience has clear standards, strong adoption, measurable outcomes, and multiple technical owners.

You are trusted across Engineering to lead difficult developer-workflow and delivery decisions.

Why Join Us -----------

You’ll shape the engineering system behind a rapidly evolving cybersecurity product used by organizations around the world. Your work will improve how every engineering team builds and operates NodeZero while establishing a new, high-leverage technical function at Horizon3.

Travel

Occasional travel may be required for company onsite meetings and team collaboration.

Perks of Horizon3

Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.

Growth Opportunities: Be part of a dynamic and growing team with numerous career development opportunities.

Innovative Culture: Work in a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.

Hybrid & Remote Work: We embrace a mix of remote and hybrid work models depending on role and location, including our Chicago office, where some roles require regular in-office presence.

Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive salary, equity and benefits. Our benefits include health, vision & dental insurance for you and your family, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave.

Compensation and Values

At Horizon3, we believe that our people are our greatest asset, and our compensation philosophy reflects this core value. We are committed to fostering an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and rewarded for their contributions. Our compensation structure is designed to be fair, competitive, and transparent, ensuring that every team member is recognized and compensated equitably across roles, levels, and locations.

In accordance with various State’s transparency regulations, we provide the following salary range information for this position:

Base salary range: $199,750 - $270,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.

Additional compensation: All full-time roles are eligible for an equity package in the form of stock options.

You Belong Here

Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, or any other legally protected status by law.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion means we strive to attract, develop, and retain a workforce that reflects the varied communities we serve. We believe that diverse perspectives drive innovation and strengthen our ability to create cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions. At Horizon3, every team member is valued and supported in an environment that encourages personal and professional growth.

We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, and we encourage all qualified individuals to apply. Come be a part of Horizon3, where your unique contributions are recognized, and your potential is limitless.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Application Note

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

About Horizon3.ai

Horizon3.ai develops NodeZero which provides an autonomous penetration testing solution that helps customers find and fix attack vectors.