Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer Department: Engineering Reports To: Senior Engineering Manager / Director of Engineering Location: Hybrid: NC, MA, NY Classification: Full-Time, Exempt Estimated

Compensation : $145-170k Focus: Integrations, AI/ML, Compliance Automation, Infrastructure Analysis About Knox Knox runs the largest Federal managed cloud, building and operating secure cloud and AI environments that support the U.S. government’s most critical missions — from national security and public safety to essential public services. Our customers rely on Knox to deploy production systems that meet the highest standards for security, reliability, and compliance. Work at Knox is high-impact and purpose-driven. The problems we solve are high-stakes, the expectations are high, and the results are visible. Speed, rigor, and trust matter here - because the environments we secure cannot fail. Your contributions are visible, your expertise is relied upon, and the impact of your work is immediate and measurable. We operate at federal scale, securing some of the most sensitive government environments in the country - because the systems we build must perform without fail.

The Role You'll be the backend powerhouse responsible for building KnoxAI's core compliance engine—integrating with third-party services, implementing AI-driven analysis, and automating the complex workflows required for FedRAMP and DISA authorizations. Your work will directly impact federal agencies' ability to assess and authorize SaaS applications securely and efficiently. This role is ideal for a senior engineer who loves solving hard integration problems, working with cutting-edge AI/ML technologies, and building systems that must be both highly reliable and auditable for government compliance.

Responsibilities Core Platform Development KSI Compliance Engine: Build automated validation for Key Security Indicators across 26+ KSI families (CNA, IAM, SVC, MLA, etc.) with hybrid automated + AI-driven scoring Integration Pipelines: Develop and maintain integrations with FedRAMP-authorized services: Security: CrowdStrike (SIEM, EDR, CNAPP), AWS Security Hub, GuardDuty, Inspector, CloudTrail IAM/PAM: Okta, Keeper (via CLI/SDK for just-in-time access, session metadata, audit logs) Operations: Jira (CAB approvals), ServiceNow (ITSM), PagerDuty (incident response) Training/Awareness: KnowBe4 (security awareness metrics) IaC Automation: Spacelift (run history, plan diffs, approvals, rollback info) Infrastructure Analysis: Parse and analyze Terraform/CloudFormation to identify NIST SP 800-53 control alignment and misconfigurations DAST Implementation: Enhance and productionize OWASP ZAP integration for dynamic application security testing of customer SaaS applications Document Repository: Build secure, controlled repository for customer-specific documentation with AI-powered SSP overlay generation AI/ML Integration Model Orchestration: Implement multi-model workflows combining OpenAI (GPT-4o), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), and Groq for compliance reasoning Model Context Protocol: Build MCP tools exposing platform capabilities to AI agents (user management, findings retrieval, KSI analysis) Fine-Tuning Pipeline: Collaborate on QWEN fine-tuning using Knox's decade of FedRAMP/DISA assessment data Prompt Engineering: Design and optimize prompts for compliance analysis, risk scoring, and remediation recommendations Vector Search: Implement RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) for policy/control lookup using OpenSearch or dedicated vector DB Data Layer & Scalability Database Design: Extend Prisma schema for new features; optimize complex queries across 35+ models Caching Strategies: Implement Redis caching for frequently accessed compliance data and KSI results Event-Driven Architecture: Build SQS-based job queues for long-running compliance evaluations and bulk imports API Performance: Ensure API response times Multi-Tenancy: Maintain strict team-based data isolation; implement row-level security where needed DevOps & Reliability Monitoring: Instrument code with CloudWatch metrics, structured logging, and distributed tracing Error Handling: Implement robust retry logic, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation for third-party API failures Testing: Write comprehensive unit and integration tests (Jest); achieve >80% code coverage on critical paths Documentation: Maintain up-to-date API documentation (OpenAPI), architecture decision records (ADRs), and runbooks Required