Senior Software Engineer – Low-Latency, Async & Systems Programming | Cloud Security
Columbia, IN - USA
Job Summary
Who is Tenable
Tenable is the Exposure Management company. Over 40000 organizations around the globe rely on Tenable to understand and reduce cyber risk. Our global employees support 65 percent of the Fortune 500 50 percent of the Global 2000 and large government agencies. Come be part of our journey!
What makes Tenable such a great place to work
Ask a member of our team and theyll answer Our people! We work together to build and innovate best-in-class cybersecurity solutions for our customers; all while creating a culture of belonging respect and excellence where we can be our best selves. When youre part of our #OneTenable team you can expect to partner with some of the most talented and passionate people in the industry and have the support and resources you need to do work that truly matters. We deliver results that exceed expectations and we win together!
Your Role:
We are looking for a true systems programmer who is obsessed with performance concurrency and low-overhead design. This role is for an engineer from a background in game engine development high-frequency trading (HFT) database internals or real-time simulation. We are looking for specialists who apply these skills in a managed environment (like C# or Java) or who come directly from a deep C/C/Rust background.
Your mission is to write high-performance asynchronous low-latency code that handles massive non-blocking throughput on a single machine. You will dig into memory profiles hunt down GC pressure eliminate allocations and design highly concurrent event-driven architectures. If your first instinct for solving a performance bottleneck is to optimize an asynchronous pipeline or a data structures memory layoutrather than throwing a Redis cache at ityou are exactly who we are looking for.
Your Opportunity
- Asynchronous Optimization: Build and refine heavy asynchronous execution patterns ensuring maximum thread efficiency and minimal latency overhead across massive workloads.
- High-Throughput Engineering: Design develop and maintain complex scalable and high-performance systems with a focus on non-blocking architectures and highly efficient maintainable code.
- Memory & Allocation Control: Aggressively reduce memory allocations and GC pressure using profiling tools (like PerfView dotTrace YourKit) and advanced allocation techniques (e.g. object pooling custom data structures Span
/Memory /ByteBuffer concepts). - Root Cause Diagnostics: Identify and troubleshoot production issues conducting low-level root cause analysis and implementing fixes to ensure strict system reliability.
- Low-Level Trade-off Analysis: Analyze and articulate the architectural trade-offs of different design choices (e.g. bitmap vs. free-list allocators array vs. list memory layout speed vs. memory synchronous blocking vs. asynchronous event loops).
- Technical Leadership: Collaborate with other senior engineers to drive technical direction fostering a culture of continuous improvement async proficiency and memory-aware development.
What Youll Need
- A High-Performance & Concurrency Background: A proven track record working in the performance-critical domains listed above specifically dealing with heavy data streams or real-time processing.
- Deep Asynchronous Mastery: Practical battle-tested experience with asynchronous event-driven or multi-threaded programming. You understand how non-blocking I/O works under the hood and how to avoid common concurrency pitfalls.
- Fluency in Memory & Data Fundamentals: You dont just know data structures; you understand how computers fundamentally process them. You can easily explain the memory layout cache-locality and algorithmic trade-offs of choosing one structure over another from first principles.
- Memory Management Proficiency: Instantly recognize and describe strategies for managing large fixed blocks of memory (e.g. bitmap allocators free lists) and mitigating memory fragmentation.
- A Systems Mindset: Fluent in bit manipulation and pointer/offset arithmetic. You are capable of calculating the exact metadata and memory overhead of your own code blocks.
- Advanced Performance Tuning: A great story about a time you used a memory or CPU profiler to hunt down a low-level bottleneck and solved it with a non-obvious structural fix.
- Language Agnostic Experience: 4 years of professional experience primarily leveraged in performance-first environments using C C Rust C# or Java.
And Ideally:
- Deep C/C/Rust Instincts: A strong background in unmanaged systems programming is the best indicator of the foundational memory skills we interview for. If you work in C# or Java you must bring an equivalent close-to-the-metal mindset.
- Security & Compliance: Experience in secure environments (FedRAMP IL5/IL6) or an active security clearance.
#LI-Hybrid #LI-LP1
This is the base pay range for this position. Compensation for the role will depend on a number of factors including the candidates qualifications skills competencies location and experience and may fall outside of the range shown. Employees are also eligible for variable compensation in addition to base pay (commission for sales roles bonus for non-sales roles) depending on company and individual performance. Tenable also offers a variety of comprehensive and competitive benefits which include: medical dental vision disability and life insurance; 401(k) retirement savings with company match; an employee stock purchase plan; an employee referral program; flexible spending accounts; an Employee Assistance Program (EAP); education assistance; parental leave; paid time off (PTO); company-paid holidays; health and wellness events; and community programs.
US Pay Range
$137500 - $183500 USD
Were committed to promoting Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) at Tenable - through all equal employment opportunity laws and regulations at the international federal state and local levels. If you need a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruiting process please contact for further assistance.
Tenable Data Consent Statement
Tenable is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal data. This Notice describes how we collect and use your personal data during and after your working relationship with us in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Please click here to review.
For California Residents: The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) requires that Tenable advise you of certain rights related to the collection of your private information. Please click here to review.
Required Experience:
Senior IC
About Company
Tenable®, Inc. is the Cyber Exposure company. Over 30,000 organizations around the globe rely on Tenable to understand and reduce cyber risk. As the creator of Nessus®, Tenable extended its expertise in vulnerabilities to deliver the world’s first platform to see and secure any digita ... View more