Senior Software Engineer – Low-Latency, Async & Systems Programming | Cloud Security

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, 45 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!

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 structure’s memory layout—rather than throwing a Redis cache at it—you 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<T>/Memory<T>/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 You'll 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 don’t 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

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.

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