Job Description We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer (Go) to join our core engineering team building a Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) powered by Artificial Intelligence. In this role, you will architect and develop the high-performance control plane and data processing engines that protect enterprise networks from sophisticated cyber threats.
You will not just build APIs; you will bridge the gap between low-level network traffic analysis and high-level threat intelligence. You will integrate industry-standard engines like Suricata, Squid, and OPNsense into a unified, AI-driven security platform. You will work on complex technical challenges involving zero-trust architecture, real-time packet inspection, and massive-scale threat data pipelines.
Key responsibilities
Core Firewall \& Security Engineering
Design and implement high-performance Go services that interact with network subsystems (netfilter/nftables) and open-source security engines (Suricata, Squid, Zeek).
Design and implement routing functionalities on low resource gateway system.
Develop custom plugins or sidecars to ingest, parse, and normalize IDS/IPS alerts (Suricata EVE logs) and Proxy logs for the AI engine.
Build the "Action Engine" that translates AI threat verdicts into real-time blocking rules (firewall policies, BGP blackholing, or DNS sinkholing).
Deeply integrate with OPNsense APIs/plugins to orchestrate policy updates across distributed firewall nodes.
Backend System Design \& Scalability
Architect scalable gRPC and REST APIs to serve as the control plane for thousands of firewall agents.
Write highly optimized, concurrent Go code to handle high-throughput log ingestion with minimal latency/GC overhead.
Design distributed locking and consistency mechanisms to ensure firewall policies are synchronized globally across multi-tenant environments.
Real-time Data \& AI Pipeline Integration
Build low-latency pipelines using Kafka or NATS JetStream to stream network telemetry to our AI/ML inference engine.
Implement WebSocket or HTTP/2 streaming for real-time threat visualization and alerting dashboards.
Collaborate with Data Scientists to ensure network data (PCAP, flow logs) is efficiently structured for anomaly detection models.
Performance \& Reliability
Optimize system performance for high packet-per-second (PPS) processing and low-latency throughput.
Debug complex networking issues (TCP handshake failures, MTU issues, asymmetric routing) using tools like tcpdump, Wireshark, and eBPF.
Implement rigorous telemetry (Prometheus/Grafana) to monitor the health of distributed firewall nodes.
Mentorship \& Collaboration
Provide technical guidance on Go best practices, concurrency patterns, and secure coding standards.
Work closely with the Security Research team to understand new attack vectors and implement detection logic.
Qualifications
Education:
Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Network Engineering, or related field.
Experience:
Go (Golang): Deep understanding of goroutines, channels, memory management, and profiling (pprof).
Network Security Fundamentals: Strong grasp of the OSI model, TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/SSL, VPNs (WireGuard/IPsec), and Routing.
Infrastructure \& Cloud: Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and deploying network appliances on AWS/GCP/Azure.
Message Queues: Production experience with Kafka, RabbitMQ, or NATS.
Good English skills (speaking and listening) to communicate with the global teams.
Firewall \& Proxy Tech: Hands-on experience with Suricata, Snort, Zeek, or Squid Proxy. Familiarity with OPNsense or pfSense architecture is a huge plus.
Nice to Have:
Experience with eBPF (Cilium/Ebpf-go) for high-performance packet filtering.
Knowledge of DPDK or XDP for kernel-bypass networking.
Understanding of B2B SaaS multi-tenancy requirements.
Experience implementing Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) concepts.