Qualys logo
Qualys Verified
Cybersecurity, Software

Lead Software Engineer - Sustenance and Tools Engineering

California, United StatesOnsiteFull TimeLead$155,000–$165,000 /yrPosted 2 months agoVisa sponsorship available

Is this role right for you?

Upload your resume and get a skill-by-skill breakdown — see exactly where you match, where you're close, and what to highlight. Not a mystery percentage.

Get a tailored resume highlighting what this role needs.

Role summary

Qualys is seeking a Lead Software Engineer for its Sustenance & Tools Engineering team. This role is crucial for ensuring platform stability, resolving customer issues rapidly, and innovating customer-facing tools. You will lead the end-to-end Customer Reported Issue (CRM) lifecycle, from triage and root-cause analysis to fix development and release. Responsibilities include live troubleshooting, developing enhancements and hotfixes, designing analytics dashboards and back-office tools, and building automation. You will also design and develop scalable microservices, ensure code quality, and create knowledge base articles. The role involves providing technical leadership, coaching, and mentorship to engineers, and participating in hiring. Requires a Bachelor's/Master's in CS or related, 7+ years of experience in production systems and customer-facing platforms, strong Java/Spring Boot microservices experience, familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), databases, and search platforms (Elasticsearch). Experience in cybersecurity is preferred.

Come work at a place where innovation and teamwork come together to support the most exciting missions in the world!
About The Role
We are seeking a
Lead Software Engineer
to join the
Sustenance & Tools Engineering
team within the Qualys ETM organization. This role is critical to ensuring platform stability, rapid issue resolution, and continuous improvement of customer experience with tooling innovation. This role is at the intersection of
customer support, analytics, and product engineering
, with a strong emphasis on ensuring that Qualys customers realize full value from their ETM investment.
You will act as a technical leader owning the
end-to-end CRM (Customer Reported Issue) lifecycle
, driving live troubleshooting, delivering fixes in production environments, and collaborating closely with Support, SRE, Product, and core engineering teams. In addition, you will help design and enhance scalable microservices while mentoring engineers and strengthening the overall sustenance engineering function.
Key Responsibilities

  • Customer Issue Management & Sustenance
  • Drive the entire CRM lifecycle from an engineering standpoint, starting from triage when a CRM is assigned to Engineering, ensuring the correct component and owning team are identified, through root-cause analysis, fix development, and final release.
  • Closely monitor all CRMs assigned to the Engineering team and ensure adherence to defined SLAs and escalation processes.
  • Lead live troubleshooting sessions with Customer Support, SREs, and other cross-functional teams to diagnose production issues and restore service quickly.
  • Provide workarounds, quick fixes, and tactical solutions wherever possible by leveraging strong software development and debugging skills.
  • Enhancements, Fixes & Production Support
  • Understand and deliver enhancement requests driven by customer use cases and real-world adoption patterns.
  • Develop and deliver hotfixes, patches, and minor enhancements, and provide upgrade and deployment support for production environments.
  • Ensure fixes are robust, well-tested, and aligned with long-term platform stability and scalability.
  • Analytics & Tools Engineering
  • Lead the design and development of analytics dashboards and back-office tools to improve customer health, adoption, and risk visibility.
  • Monitor customer usage patterns and provide actionable insights to internal teams for proactive engagement.
  • Build automation and self-service capabilities that reduce friction for customers and internal support teams.
  • Architecture, Design & Code Quality
  • Design, develop, and deliver distributed, scalable, high-performance, containerized microservice-based applications.
  • Collaborate with core ETM teams across connectors, asset management, and risk management to ensure seamless integration and consistency.
  • Ensure high-quality design and code through thorough design reviews, code reviews, and adherence to engineering best practices.
  • Knowledge Sharing & Enablement
  • Create and maintain knowledge base articles and runbooks for both customers and internal teams to reduce troubleshooting time and improve first-time resolution.
  • Act as a technical escalation point and provide expert guidance and mentorship to team members.
  • Team Building & Leadership
  • Provide technical leadership, coaching, and mentorship to engineers within the sustenance and tools engineering team.
  • Participate actively in hiring processes, including interviewing and technical evaluations, to help build a strong and scalable sustenance engineering organization.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
  • 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on production systems and customer-facing platforms.
  • Strong hands-on experience building Java/Spring Boot microservices, preferably in a SaaS environment, including implementation of single sign-on (SSO) authentication mechanisms such as SAML, OAuth, or OpenID Connect.
  • Experience working with containerized and distributed systems (Docker, Kubernetes).
  • Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills in complex, production-scale environments.
  • Solid understanding of relational databases and search/analytics platforms (e.g., Elasticsearch).
  • Experience collaborating with Support, SRE, and Product teams to resolve customer-impacting issues.
  • Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical issues clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Experience working in cybersecurity, risk management, or asset management platforms.

The salary range for this position is $155,000 - $165,000 per year. Final compensation will be determined based on several factors, including but not limited to skills, relevant experience, and work location. Please note this range reflects base salary and does not include incentive compensation or potential equity grants. We also offer a comprehensive and highly competitive benefits package.
Qualys is an Equal Opportunity Employer, please see our EEO policy.

Sample Qualys interview questions

  • 1

    Find the majority element in an array.

    codingmedium
  • 2

    Sort a string by the frequency of its characters.

    codingmedium

Sign up for a personalized interview prep pack tailored to this role.

Ready to apply?
You'll be redirected to Qualys's application page.