Senior Software Engineer

About the role

Big Ideas. Real People.

At Orca, in the right environment and with the right team, talent has no boundaries . This team spirit, together with our drive to always aim high, has quickly earned us unicorn status and turned us into a global cloud security innovation leader. So if you’re ready to join an amazing team of people who inspire each other every day, now is the time to find your place in our pod.

We’re looking for driven and talented people like you to join our R&D team and our mission to change the future of cloud security. Ready to dive in and swim with our pod?

Highlights:

High-growth: Over the past seven years, we’ve consistently achieved milestones that take other companies a decade or more. During this time, we’ve significantly grown our employee base, expanded our customer reach, and rapidly advanced our product capabilities.

Disruptive innovation: Our founders saw that traditional security didn’t work for the cloud, so they set out to carve a new path. We’re relentless pioneers who invented agentless technology and continue to be the most comprehensive and innovative cloud security company.

Well-capitalized: With a valuation of $1.8 billion, Orca is a cybersecurity unicorn dominating the cloud security space. We’re backed by an impressive team of investors such as Capital G, ICONIQ, GGV, and SVCI, a syndicate of CISOs who invest their own money after conducting their due diligence.

Respectful and transparent culture: Our executives pride themselves on being accessible to everyone and believe in sharing knowledge with the employees. Each employee has a place in shaping the future of our industry.

About the Role:

As a Senior Software Engineer on the KSPM team at Orca Security, you will join a mission-critical group building and scaling one of the company’s core and fastest-growing security products. Our team enables customers to secure their Kubernetes environments across every major cloud provider, delivering deep visibility into cluster misconfigs, RBAC risk, admission control, compliance drift and container vulnerabilities.

In this role you will design the backend services and data models that discover, onboard, scan, and represent K8s workloads, APIs, and configurations at scale. You will own core services end-to-end, drive architectural improvements and partner with security researchers to turn complex threat vectors into actionable insights.

We are looking for backend engineers who care deeply about software design, cloud-native infrastructure, and container security. This is a high-impact role with real ownership - lead features end-to-end, mentor teammates, and help shape the technical direction of Orca’s KSPM offering.

Our Stack: Python, Go, K8s APIs, K8s ecosystem tooling (OPA/Gatekeeper, admission controllers), Docker & container runtimes, SingleStore, Postgres, Redis, Kafka, SQS, ElasticSearch, AWS, GCP, Azure.

What You'll Do:

Design & build at scale: Design, implement, and maintain scalable backend services that discover, onboard, scan, and analyze Kubernetes environments across multi-cloud and managed clusters.

Model K8s security: Map and represent Kubernetes resources as clean data models that surface misconfigurations, exposure risks, and compliance violations.

Integrate detection engines: Integrate and evolve detection engines for container vulnerabilities, secrets, RBAC risks, misconfigurations, and compliance frameworks.

Collaborate on research & product: Partner with security researchers and product managers to translate novel findings and complex requirements into impactful features.

Design for quality: Write clean, well-tested code in Python or Go, with thoughtful abstractions and APIs that keep the system correct and maintainable as it grows.

Lead & mentor: Lead design discussions and code reviews that uphold high engineering and security standards across the team.

Own it end-to-end: Own features through their full lifecycle - from technical specification and design through implementation, testing, and release.

What You Bring:

Education & experience: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience, with 5+ years of professional software development experience.

Backend & distributed systems: Strong background building microservices, cloud-native services, and distributed systems that handle large-scale workloads.

Languages: Solid, hands-on experience with Python or Go.

Engineering fundamentals: Deep understanding of software design principles, concurrency models, data structures, and algorithms.

Cloud & containers: Solid familiarity with public cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and containerized workflows (Docker, container runtimes).

Mindset & ownership: Self-driven and proactive, comfortable taking a complex technical challenge e2e.

Collaboration & communication: Excellent communicator with a team-first mindset that thrives in a collaborative, cross-functional environment.

Bonus Points if You Have:

Kubernetes expertise: Practical experience with Kubernetes internals, API primitives, custom controllers/operators, and managed services (EKS, GKE, AKS).

Cloud engineering : Experience with major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure).

Security domain background: Prior domain knowledge in cloud security, KSPM, CSPM, or vulnerability management.