Senior Software Engineer, Security Products

DigitalOcean

Location
San Francisco, US (Remote)
Job Type
full-time
Salary
$160,440 - $200,520
Posted
September 6, 2025

Job Description

Dive in and do the best work of your career at DigitalOcean. Journey alongside a strong community of top talent who are relentless in their drive to build the simplest scalable cloud. If you have a growth mindset, naturally like to think big and bold, and are energized by the fast-paced environment of a true industry disruptor, you’ll find your place here.  We value winning together—while learning, having fun, and making a profound difference for the dreamers and builders in the world. 

We are seeking a highly experienced and motivated Senior Software Engineer to join our Security Products team. In this pivotal role, you will be instrumental in designing, building, and maintaining robust security products and infrastructure that protect Digital Ocean's platform and our customers' data. This is an exciting opportunity for an individual who thrives in a fast-paced environment and is passionate about solving complex security challenges at scale.

What you’ll do

  • Design and develop real-time security detection engines using Apache Flink and Kafka for threat detection at cloud scale
  • Build high-performance security APIs and microservices using Go and JavaScript/Node.js
  • Implement streaming analytics for security event correlation, anomaly detection, and threat intelligence
  • Architect and implement security solutions running on Kubernetes at hyperscale
  • Develop security data pipelines processing petabytes of logs, network traffic, and telemetry data
  • Lead technical design for complex security platform features from conception to production
  • Collaborate with security researchers, threat analysts, and cloud platform teams
  • Mentor junior engineers on security engineering best practices and cloud-native development

What we’ll expect from you

  • 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant exposure to building products at security companies or within security functions.
  • Expert-level Go and strong JavaScript/Node.js skills
  • Proven track record of designing and implementing high-throughput, scalable systems with large data requirements
  • Deep understanding of distributed systems: consensus, replication, partitioning, and consistency - Production Apache Flink and advanced Kafka experience processing high-volume event streams.
  • Deep Kubernetes expertise running security-critical workloads at scale
  • Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) with understanding of cloud security models, infrastructure as Code expertise (Terraform, Helm, Chef)
  • Experience building systems handling millions of events per second
  • Familiarity with various security tools and technologies (e.g., SIEM, WAF, IDS/IPS, vulnerability scanners).
  • Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills.
  • Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic, and rapidly evolving environment.

Nice to Have

  • Experience with distributed systems and microservices architectures.
  • Knowledge of cryptography and secure communication protocols.
  • Contributions to open-source security projects.

Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean:

  • We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions. 
  • We prioritize career development. At DO, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses to support their continued growth and development.
  • We care about your well-being. Regardless of your location, we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy, to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide, specific benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.
  • We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is $160,440 - $200,520 based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company and individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program. 
  • We value diversity and inclusion. We are an equal-opportunity employer, and recognize that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams and products to serve our customers. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

🎯 Who is this job for?

This role is ideal for a Senior Software Engineer with 5+ years of experience building high-throughput, scalable security systems using Go, Node.js, Apache Flink, and Kafka. Candidates should have deep knowledge of Kubernetes, distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and a strong background in security engineering and real-time threat detection. Experience with IaC tools (Terraform, Helm) and handling massive event streams is essential.

πŸ’¬ Potential Interview Questions

  1. How would you design a real-time security detection engine using Kafka and Apache Flink?
    By leveraging Kafka for high-throughput event ingestion and Flink for stateful stream processing, applying windowing, aggregations, and anomaly detection algorithms to identify suspicious patterns in near real time.

  2. What are some challenges in building high-throughput security systems, and how would you address them?
    Challenges include handling large event volumes, ensuring low latency, and maintaining data consistency. Solutions involve horizontal scaling, partitioning, backpressure management, and careful schema evolution.

  3. How do you secure APIs in a cloud-native environment?
    By using authentication and authorization (OAuth2, JWT), enforcing TLS, implementing rate limiting, input validation, and regularly auditing for vulnerabilities.

  4. What are the main advantages of Go for building security-critical microservices?
    Go provides high performance, strong concurrency via goroutines, a small runtime footprint, and simplicity, which makes it well-suited for reliable and scalable security applications.

  5. How would you architect Kubernetes workloads for hyperscale security applications?
    By designing multi-tenant clusters with RBAC, network policies, pod security standards, autoscaling, service meshes (e.g., Istio), and monitoring with Prometheus/Grafana.

  6. What techniques would you use for anomaly detection in security event streams?
    Using statistical models, sliding window aggregations, machine learning approaches, or threshold-based rules to identify unusual patterns in metrics or event sequences.

  7. How does Flink differ from other stream processing frameworks like Spark Streaming?
    Flink offers true stream processing with low-latency event handling, exactly-once semantics, and advanced state management, while Spark Streaming processes micro-batches with higher latency.

  8. What are common trade-offs in designing distributed systems for security workloads?
    Balancing consistency vs availability, ensuring fault tolerance while maintaining performance, and deciding between centralized vs decentralized detection logic.

  9. How would you implement infrastructure as code for secure cloud deployments?
    Using Terraform or Helm to define reproducible configurations, enforcing security baselines, integrating scanning tools, and applying CI/CD pipelines for deployment validation.

  10. What role does cryptography play in securing large-scale cloud systems?
    It ensures data confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity through encryption (at rest and in transit), secure key management, and protocols like TLS and mutual authentication.

πŸ“‹ Job Summary

DigitalOcean is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to build cutting-edge security products at cloud scale. You'll work remotely with Go, Node.js, Flink, Kafka, and Kubernetes to power real-time threat detection and petabyte-scale security data pipelines. The role offers \$160K–\$200K salary, equity, and growth-focused benefits in a high-impact, fast-paced environment. Join a world-class team simplifying cloud security for developers worldwide.

Required Skills

Go Node.js

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