Software Engineer - AI Platform Team Job Boston area,Massachusetts USA,Software Development

Position: Staff Software Engineer - AI Platform Team

About Us Proofpoint is a global leader in human‑ and agent‑centric cybersecurity. We protect how people, data, and AI agents connect across email, cloud, and collaboration tools. Over 80% of the Fortune 100, 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations trust Proofpoint to stop threats, prevent data loss, and build resilience across their people and AI workflows. Our mission is simple: safeguard the digital world and empower people to work securely and confidently.

Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people.

How We Work

Bold in how we dream and innovate
Responsive to feedback, challenges and opportunities
Accountable for results and best in class outcomes
Visionary in future focused problem‑solving
Exceptional in execution and impact

The Role As a Staff Software Engineer on our Satori AI Platform team, you will drive the architecture of the internal platform that every Proofpoint product team uses to build agentic applications — spanning AI‑assisted development, evaluation‑based release gates, Open Telemetry observability for agents in production, and cross‑product AuthX for AI workloads. Your direct users are fellow product engineers, and the products they ship protect business‑critical communications for Fortune 100 customers 24/7/365.

The patterns and primitives you set will define how mission‑critical agentic software ships across the company. This is a uniquely‑challenging role: we empower small teams to make large impacts, the systems are inherently non‑deterministic, and the bar for what we ship to product teams is high.

Your day-to-day

Set architectural direction for one or more platform pillars: AI‑assisted developer workflows, eval‑driven release gates, Open Telemetry for LLM/agent traffic, cross‑product AuthX, etc.
Design agent runtimes and SDKs on frameworks like Lang Graph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Anthropic's Agent SDK, and MCP, in Python (typed) and Type Script/Node
Define what "release‑ready" means for an agent at Proofpoint: the eval suites, safety checks, telemetry, and AuthX contracts that gate every rollout
Partner with product team tech leads across the org to land your architecture in their stacks; turn one‑off integrations into reusable platform capabilities
Drive the standards for prompt management, model selection, cost/latency budgets, and observability across products
Design, code, review, test, and deploy software features in our application stack — Staff engineers at Proofpoint still write code
Mentor engineers across the platform and product teams; raise the company‑wide bar for what production agentic software looks like

What you bring to the team

Prior experience taking agentic or LLM‑based systems to production — not just prototypes — including the eval, observability, and rollback story
Deep experience with Python (typed) and/or Type Script/Node, plus an opinion on which belongs where in the Satori AI Platform
Hands‑on work with agent frameworks (Lang Graph, OpenAI/Anthropic Agents SDK, MCP, Lang Chain) and eval tooling (Lang Smith, Braintrust, promptfoo, or similar)
Strong fluency with Open Telemetry, including the GenAI semantic conventions, and a track record of debugging distributed systems from traces
Ability to see the big picture, collaborate with cross‑product teams, and drive architectural conversations
Experience designing, developing, and supporting applications in a microservices cloud environment
Excellent verbal and written communication skills — you can convince another team's tech lead to adopt your platform
Passion, curiosity, integrity, and outstanding attention to detail while performing tasks
A "get it done" attitude consistent with a team where everyone writes code
A B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience

Why Proofpoint?

Competitive compensation
Comprehensive benefits
Career success on your terms
Flexible work environment
Annual wellness and community outreach days
Always on recognition for your contributions
Global collaboration and networking opportunities

Our Culture Our culture is rooted in values that inspire belonging, empower purpose and drive success‑every day, for everyone. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. If you need accommodation during the application or interview process, please reach out to Opportunity Employer Proofpoint is an equal opportunity employer. We hire without consideration to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status or disability.#J-18808-Ljbffr