Staff Software Engineer

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be driving and proposing strategies around complex and unique technical problems affecting our core platform and business needs.
You'll be instrumental in communicating technical standards and gaining buy-in on solutions across engineering teams. By serving as an expert and owner in multiple areas of the codebase, you will successfully deliver the architecture and execution of major platform components from conception to release.
About the Team
Our Platform Foundations team is responsible for building and maintaining the robust, scalable, and resilient infrastructure that underpins all of our products and services. We provide the essential building blocks, services, and tooling that empower development teams across the organisation to deliver high-quality, high-performance solutions to our customers.
We work with a combination of cloud-native and on-premise technologies, focusing on core services, shared libraries, data pipelines, and foundational APIs that enable our applications to operate at scale. This is a critical and exciting time for the team as we continue to grow and evolve our platform to support increased expansion and the diverse needs of our product portfolio. It's a great opportunity to join us and help shape the future direction of our foundational technology and architecture.
About the Role
As a Staff Software Engineer on the Platform Foundations team, your primary responsibility will be to help set and drive the technical direction for the core platform.
Specifically, your focus will be to:

• Design and build core platform services and APIs that are scalable, reliable, and performant, serving as the backbone for all our products.
• Work with stakeholders across various product teams to understand their needs, providing technical guidance and shaping features during design and planning phases to ensure alignment with platform capabilities and best practices.
• Actively participate in code and design reviews, asking insightful questions and providing constructive feedback to improve the quality and maintainability of our platform components. We thrive on collaboration!
• Directly mentor a small number of junior engineers, helping them grow their skills, identify growth areas, set clear expectations, and provide regular, actionable feedback.
• Help shape our overall platform architecture. You'll be involved in strategic initiatives as we continue to scale and evolve our foundational systems, ensuring our ability to process millions of events and transactions daily.
• Be a leader and a mentor. Share your deep technical experience across the team to help others learn and inspire your peers to achieve their best. You'll also expect the same high level of collaboration and learning from your team members.
• Write clean, efficient, and well-tested code for critical platform components.

The skills and qualities you'll bring include:

• 7+ years of experience in software development, with a deep understanding of one or more programming languages, primarily Java or Python.
• An interest in remaining a hands-on programmer for the next few years as you learn and contribute to the architecture of the system.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (e.g Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) and proficiency with version control systems such as GitHub.
• A demonstrable passion for the craft of software development and building robust, maintainable systems.
• A history demonstrating a team-based approach to problem-solving and a commitment to collaborative development.
• Experience defining clear contracts for coordinating development of software projects across multiple teams.
• A dynamic sense of ownership and responsibility for the quality and reliability of the software that both you and your team deliver.
• Empathy for our users and the Rapid7 mission, understanding how platform stability and performance directly impact customer experience.
• An ability to pick up new technologies and processes quickly and adapt to evolving platform needs.
• Experience mentoring and driving the career development of junior members of the team.
• Strong knowledge of cloud computing platforms, such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, with an understanding of cloud-native architectures and services.

We know that the best ideas and solutions come from multi-dimensional teams. That's because these teams reflect a variety of backgrounds and professional experiences. If you are excited about this role and feel your experience can make an impact, please don't be shy - apply today.
About Rapid7
At Rapid7, our vision is to create a secure digital world for our customers, our industry, and our communities. We do this by harnessing our collective expertise and passion to challenge what's possible and drive extraordinary impact. We're building a dynamic and collaborative workplace where new ideas are welcome.
Protecting 11,000+ customers against bad actors and threats means we're continuing to push the envelope - just like we've been doing for the past 20 years. If you're ready to solve some of the toughest challenges in cybersecurity by building foundational technology, we're ready to help you take command of your career. Join us.
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