Senior Engineering Manager, Database Platform

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. What You'll Do You will lead the Database Platform team — the engineering team responsible for the data infrastructure that underpins every NodeZero pentest, finding, and report. NodeZero operates at scale: millions of discovered assets, tens of millions of vulnerability findings, and audit-critical data that our customers rely on to remediate risk. The Database Platform team owns the design, operation, and reliability of our core data layer — currently PostgreSQL as the primary store and Neo4j for the asset graph, with time-series and analytical stores on the roadmap as NodeZero's data volume and use cases grow. You will lead a team of ~8 engineers including a Principal Engineer, and you will build this team from a strong foundation into a fully staffed, world-class data platform organization. Team Building & Culture:

Hire, mentor, and grow the Database Platform team to full capacity. Establish database engineering norms and a culture of ownership for engineers who share responsibility for the most critical data layer in our stack.

Data Architecture:

Partner with the Principal Engineer to define the technical direction for NodeZero's data platform — schema design standards, query patterns, migration strategies, and scalability principles.

Reliability & Operations:

Own SLOs for database availability, query latency, and data integrity across production environments. Drive oncall maturity and runbook quality.

Data Modeling & Schema Governance:

Establish schema review processes and data modeling standards. Ensure NodeZero's data model evolves cleanly as new pentest capabilities ship.

Cross-team Partnership:

Collaborate with Data Ingestion, Security Research, and API Platform teams to align on data contracts, API design, and pipeline dependencies.

Act as a Product Owner:

Translate data platform needs from Security Research and Product into a clear, prioritized engineering roadmap.

What You'll Bring Data Platform Leadership & Architecture Demonstrated experience leading teams that design, scale, and operate relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred) and hybrid data stores (graph, time-series, or document) in production at scale.

Experience defining schema migration strategies for high-velocity production environments with zero-downtime requirements.

Experience with multi-tenant data architectures: customer data isolation, row-level security, and data residency concerns.

Strong understanding of database performance: query optimization, indexing strategies, EXPLAIN analysis, and connection pooling.

Team Building & Engineering Culture Experience building or significantly growing an engineering team — including hiring, onboarding, and establishing engineering norms tailored for data-intensive systems.

Proven ability to define and instill engineering culture: rigorous schema review, data integrity standards, operational runbooks, and oncall rotation.

Drives high-impact architecture decisions rigorously — requires design documents, runs structured reviews, builds consensus across platform teams.

Able to partner effectively with a Principal Engineer and leverage their technical leadership without diminishing team ownership.

Technical Expertise Proficient in Go, Python, or SQL (deep expertise).

Production experience with PostgreSQL at scale: partitioning, logical replication, pg_bouncer/pgpool, read replicas.

Experience with AWS data services: RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, or equivalent.

Familiarity with graph databases (Neo4j, AWS Neptune) or time-series stores (TimescaleDB, InfluxDB) is a strong plus.

Kubernetes and containerized database operations — stateful workload management.

Nice to Haves Background in cybersecurity data, threat intelligence feeds, or vulnerability databases.

Experience with data platform compliance: SOC 2, FedRAMP, or GDPR/CCPA data handling requirements.

Familiarity with analytical query patterns: BI tooling, OLAP workloads, or customer-facing analytics.

Experience operating databases in multi-region or active-active configurations.

Travel Required We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 5% of travel to be successful. 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: $242,250 - $275,000 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.

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.

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.