Backend Engineer

About us

Astra is a cyber security SaaS company that makes otherwise chaotic pentests a breeze with its one of a kind Pentest Platform. Astra's continuous vulnerability scanner emulates hacker behavior to scan applications for 8300+ security tests. CTOs & CISOs love Astra because it helps them fix vulnerabilities in record time and move from DevOps to DevSecOps with Astra's CI/CD integrations.

Astra is loved by 650+ companies across the globe. In 2023 Astra uncovered 2 million+ vulnerabilities for its customers, saving customers $69M+ in potential losses due to security vulnerabilities. 

We've been awarded by the President of France Mr. François Hollande at the La French Tech program and Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi at the Global Conference on Cyber Security. Loom, MamaEarth, Muthoot Finance, Canara Robeco, ScripBox etc. are a few of Astra’s customers.

Role Overview

As an SDE 2 Back-end Engineer at Astra, you will play a crucial role in the development of a new vulnerability scanner from scratch. You will be architecting & engineering a scalable technical solution from the ground-up.

You will have the opportunity to work alongside talented individuals, collaborating to deliver innovative solutions and pushing the boundaries of what's possible in vulnerability scanning. The role requires deep collaboration with the founders, product, engineering & security teams.

Join our team and contribute to the development of a cutting-edge SaaS security platform, where high-quality engineering and continuous learning are at the core of everything we do.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• You will be joining our Vulnerability Scanner team which builds a security engine to identify vulnerabilities in technical infrastructure.
• You will be the technical product owner of the scanner, which would involve managing a lean team of backend engineers to ensure smooth implementation of the technical product roadmap.
• Research about security vulnerabilities, CVEs, and zero-days affecting cloud/web/API infrastructure.
• Work in an agile environment of engineers to architect, design, develop and build our microservice infrastructure.
• You will research, design, code, troubleshoot and support (on-call). What you create is also what you own.
• Writing secure, high quality, modular, testable & well documented code for features outlined in every sprint.
• Design and implement APIs in support of other services with a highly scalable, flexible, and secure backend using GoLang
• Hands-on experience with creating production-ready code & optimizing it by identifying and correcting bottlenecks.
• Driving strict code review standards among the team.
• Ensuring timely delivery of the features/products
• Working with product managers to ensure product delivery status is transparent & the end product always looks like how it was imagined
• Work closely with Security & Product teams in writing vulnerability detection rules, APIs etc.

Required Qualifications & Skills: 

• Strong 2-4 years relevant development experience in GoLang
• Experience in building a technical product from idea to production.
• Design and build highly scalable and maintainable systems in Golang
• Expertise in Goroutines and Channels to write efficient code utilizing multi-core CPU optimally
• Must have hands-on experience with managing AWS/Google Cloud infrastructure
• Hands on experience in creating low latency high throughput REST APIs
• Write test suites and maintain code coverage above 80%
• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka
• Good to have experience in Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka
• Good understanding of Data Structures, Algorithms and Operating Systems.
• Understanding of cloud/web security concepts would be an added advantage

What We Offer:

• Adrenalin rush of being a part of a fast-growing company
• Fully remote & agile working environment
• A wholesome opportunity in a fast-paced environment where you get to build things from scratch, improve and influence product design decisions
• Holistic understanding of SaaS and enterprise security business
• Opportunity to engage and collaborate with developers globally
• Experience with security side of things
• Annual trips to beaches or mountains (last one was Chikmangaluru)
• Open and supportive culture 

Requirements:

• Excellent knowledge of Core Java (J2SE) and J2EE technologies.
• Hands-on experience with RESTful services and API design is a must.
• Knowledge of microservices architecture is a must.
• Knowledge of design patterns is a must.
• Strong knowledge of Exception handling and logging mechanism is a must.
• Agile scrum participation experience. Work experience with several agile teams on an application built with microservices and event-based architectures to be deployed in hybrid (on-prem/cloud) environments.
• Good knowledge of Spring framework (MVC, Cloud, Data and Security. Etc) and ORM framework like JPA/Hibernate.
• Experience in managing the Source Code Base through Version Control tools like SVN, GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.

Requirements

• Design and implement a full-stack web application using Python Django framework and ReactJS.
• 1+ years of experience in building and deploying web applications.
• Experience in designing and using RESTful APIs.
• Basic knowledge in front-end technologies such as JavaScript, , ReactJS, HTML5, and CSS3.
• Understanding of fundamental design principles behind a scalable application.
• Understanding of databases, SQL and non-relational, plus the Django ORM.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript, including DOM manipulation and the JavaScript object model.
• Experience in web mark-up like HTML and CSS.
• Experience with data structure libraries.
• Familiarity with RESTful APIs.
• A knack for bench marking and optimization.
• Knowledge of modern authorization mechanisms, such as JSON Web Token.
• Familiarity with modern front-end build pipelines and tools.
• Experience with common front-end development tools such as NPM etc.
• Strong knowledge of Git version control.
• Experience deploying Python applications into production.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) knowledge is a plus.
• 
  

Responsibilities

• Writing reusable, testable, and efficient code.
• Design and implementation of low-latency, high-availability, and performance applications using Django framework in Python.
• Create and use the REST APIs for communicating with other apps.
• Assess and prioritize feature requests and work in Agile framework.
• Implementation of security and data protection algorithms.
• Integration of data storage solutions like databases, key-value stores, blob stores, S3 etc.
• Improve the functionality of existing systems and applications.
• High commitment to work and taking ownership of deliverables.
• Help to research and influence our path forward with strategic technology initiatives.

Responsibilities :

• Lead the development of the backend systems for our client's first product.
• Build reliable, secure, and performant backend systems.
• Drive test coverage and continuous delivery automation within the team.
• Mentor and provide feedback to teammates.
• You should have a min of 8 years of software development experience and management.
• Can write code that is readable, maintainable, secure, and performant.
• Know the importance of tests and how to approach writing different types of tests, good intuition for REST API design
• Deep understanding of relational databases, transactions, entity-relationship modeling.
• Comfortable writing highly concurrent systems.
• Experienced in using profilers, tuning garbage collection, optimizing SQL queries.

• Golang, Java, Python, Ruby, Node.

1. Need to have an understanding of Elastic Search, Kafka, mongo DB, etc.

2. Should have experience of Jupter noobooks, data bricks

3. Java, Pythons

4. Senior level, 5-10 years of experience

5. It is important they have those skills so that they can take over current work. There are codes written in both Java as well as Python. (Java is legacy but that is the main search engine code). So it will be counter-productive if engineers hired have experience in both.

6. Excellent communication, analytical, research, grasping skills

Requires a bachelor's degree in area of specialty and experience in the field or in a related area. Familiar with standard concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field. Relies on experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals. Performs a variety of tasks. A degree of creativity and latitude is required. Typically reports to a supervisor or manager.

Designs, develops, and implements web-based Java applications to support business requirements. Follows approved life cycle methodologies, creates design documents, and performs program coding and testing. Resolves technical issues through debugging, research, and investigation.

Additional Job Details:

Strong in Java, Spring, Spring Boot, REST and developing MicroServices.

Knowledge or experience , Cassandra preferred

Knowledge or experience on Kafka

Good to have but not must

Good to know:

Reporting tools like Splunk/Grafana

Protobuf

Python/Ruby