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.

At Proofpoint you’ll be part of a global team that breaks barriers to redefine cybersecurity guided by our BRAVE core values:

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

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.

• 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

• Experience developing and supporting AI-powered applications, with exposure to agentic or LLM-based systems in development, testing, or production environments.

• Proficiency in Python and/or Type Script/Node.js, with the ability to write maintainable, scalable, and well-tested code.

• Familiarity with agent frameworks such as Lang Graph, Lang Chain, OpenAI/Anthropic Agents SDK, MCP, or similar technologies.

• Exposure to evaluation, monitoring, and observability concepts for AI applications, including experience with tools such as Lang Smith, Braintrust, promptfoo, Open Telemetry, or similar solutions.

• Experience troubleshooting application and service issues using logs, metrics, traces, and other diagnostic tools.

• Ability to collaborate effectively with engineering, product, and platform teams to deliver solutions and resolve technical challenges.

• Experience designing, developing, and supporting applications in cloud-based and/or microservices environments.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to clearly share ideas, provide updates, and participate in technical discussions.

• Demonstrated curiosity, attention to detail, and a willingness to learn new technologies and apply feedback.

• A proactive, team-oriented mindset with a willingness to take ownership of assigned work and contribute to team success.

• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent…