About this role.
Tenable is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to build cloud-native search and data-platform services supporting its cybersecurity products. The role focuses on scalable Java or Kotlin microservices for data ingestion, storage, querying, and retrieval, with strong reliability and production ownership expectations. The engineer will work with Kubernetes, distributed databases, event-driven systems, and search technologies while contributing to platform architecture. This senior role also includes mentoring engineers and collaborating closely with product managers, designers, and other technical stakeholders.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
4/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
4/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would begin by clarifying throughput, latency, durability, consistency, retention, and query requirements. I would use asynchronous ingestion through a durable event stream, make consumers idempotent, partition work for horizontal scale, and select storage based on access patterns. I would also define observability, back-pressure controls, retry and dead-letter strategies, and load tests before production rollout.
I would first correlate the latency with application traces, database metrics, and query logs to confirm the bottleneck. I would inspect the execution plan, cardinality estimates, indexes, join order, locking, and data distribution, then test targeted changes such as index improvements, query rewrites, pagination, or schema adjustments. I would validate the fix under representative load and monitor for regressions after release.
I design consumers to be idempotent, use durable messaging, and explicitly handle duplicate, delayed, and out-of-order events. I use retries with bounded exponential backoff, dead-letter queues for nonrecoverable failures, schema versioning, and correlation IDs for tracing. I also monitor consumer lag, error rates, processing latency, and delivery failures with clear operational runbooks.
I would implement health checks, graceful shutdown, readiness gating, timeouts, circuit breakers, bulkheads, and sensible retry policies. Deployments should use rolling or canary strategies with automated rollback criteria, while APIs should preserve backward compatibility. I would ensure dashboards and alerts expose service-level indicators such as availability, latency, saturation, and error rate.
I set clear technical outcomes, break complex work into appropriately scoped ownership areas, and provide design and code-review feedback that explains tradeoffs rather than simply prescribing solutions. I pair on critical decisions when needed and create opportunities for engineers to present designs and lead implementation. This develops independence while maintaining quality through shared standards, testing, and regular technical checkpoints.
Who is Tenable?
Tenable® is the Exposure Management company. Over 40,000 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 they’ll 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 you’re 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!
Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. without sponsorship. We are unable to provide sponsorship for work visas of any kind at the time of hire, or at any point during employment. This includes, but is not limited to: F1-OPT, F1-CPT, H-1B, TN, J-1, etc.
Your Role:
Tenable is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our core product engineering team. Focused on designing, developing, and maintaining cloud-based, state-of-the-art search solutions on top of our customers’ ever-evolving landscape of infrastructure in a scalable way. As a Senior Software Engineer on the team, you will have the opportunity to be part of implementing and maintaining a highly scalable, highly reliable cloud-native user interface and underlying microservices which utilize modern technologies and programming languages.
Your Opportunity:
Building the Backbone, not just Processing Data: This role centers on crafting the services that enable data ingestion, storage, querying, and retrieval at scale. It’s about building the reliable and efficient ‘plumbing’ that powers the entire data ecosystem. A critical aspect of this job is to build and manage services around data handling. Unlike typical data engineering roles that might focus primarily on querying and data manipulation, this role also demands building the infrastructure and services that support these activities.
- Data Management: This role will be responsible for managing the ingestion, storage, and retrieval of data within the platform. This includes ensuring the robustness and efficiency of these processes
- Leadership: As a senior member of the team, you will have the opportunity to architect, design and implement features to help drive the overall architecture of our platform
- Innovate: Become a member of senior engineering teams driving on-going innovation of our global cloud architecture and distributed systems that serves our broad customer base with the latest cyber security technologies
- Learn new things: We provide a training budget for you to attend conferences or workshops
- Raise the bar: We are always looking for ways to improve ourselves, our tech stack, and our product features. Bring your ideas and experiences to the table and help make a lasting impact
- Collaborate: Work closely with Product Managers, other engineers, designers, and stakeholders to continuously iterate on our products and drive consensus. You will have the opportunity to support and mentor your peers inside and outside your team
What You’ll Need:
- 4+ years of software development experience in enterprise development and a desire to lead
- Experience in software development, particularly within a distributed, microservice architecture
- Experience in database performance tuning, schema design, query optimization in a distributed microservice architecture
- B.S. degree in Computer Science or a directly related field, or equivalent work experience
- Experience developing in Java or Kotlin, and a willingness to learn new languages as needed
- Experience of working in containerized microservice architecture in Kubernetes
- Experience in developing core libraries, infrastructure, and search engines
- Cross-platform development is a big plus
- Accountability for the behavior of your software in production
- Experience coaching and leading mid-level and junior staff in the design, implementation, and execution of highly technical development projects
- Experience in working in an Agile team, and an enthusiasm for working collaboratively within and across product teams
- The ability to work independently and as a part of a team, and to lead/drive projects as necessary
- Experience with databases (SQL or NoSQL such as PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch).
- Experience with event-driven systems (Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ or similar)
- The desire to continuously learn and be exposed to new technologies
#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 candidate’s 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
$137,500—$183,500 USD
We’re 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 Recruiting@Tenable.com for further assistance.
Tenable Data Consent Statement
Tenable is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal data. Depending on your location, one or more of the following notices may apply to you:
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