Staff Software Development Engineer

Fortinet

Confirmed live yesterday High trust

Quick summary

Work type: On-site
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Salary: $150,000–$215,000 / yr
Employment: Full-time
Posted: 116 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live yesterday
Nearby: 99+ roles within 25 mi

Market check

Salary context

Below market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $192k

This role $182k

$129k $278k

below market most similar roles pay here above market

This role pays less than 67% of similar roles. Most pay $168,784–$215,250 — the blue band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $182k versus about $192k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About Fortinet

Fortinet is a US-based cybersecurity company best known for its FortiGate next-generation firewalls. It sells a broad security platform spanning network security, SD-WAN, endpoint protection, cloud security, and SIEM/SOC operations.

Fortinet currently has 102 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $140,000–$183,000 across 77 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Fortinet

At a glance

TL;DR · Staff Software Development Engineer

Role Posting Log in to save

The Staff Software Development Engineer joins the network security team to develop and enhance critical features including signature engines, header security, CSRF, WAF scripting, API security, and bot mitigation. This role involves enhancing debugging and unit testing tools, researching new technologies, and collaborating with Cloud and Intelligence teams to improve intelligence databases regarding false positives and evasion cases. The engineer will work with Product Management on roadmaps and design new features throughout the development lifecycle. Required technical skills include proficiency in C, Linux development tools like gcc, gdb, and libc, and understanding GNU Makefiles. Candidates must possess solid knowledge of HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 protocols, web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and experience with web servers such as Nginx, Apache, or Haproxy.

What does a Software Development Engineer earn in California?

Median $197750 from 82 postings across 10 companies.

See salary data

Skills

C Linux Nginx Apache HAProxy HTTP HTTPS HTTP2 WAF IDS IPS VPN SSL HTML CSS JavaScript JSON XML ModSecurity Snort Burp Suite OWASP ZAP Metasploit Sqlmap Selenium Puppeteer gcc gdb libc GNU Makefile SQL Injection XSS CSRF MITM DoS

What you'll do

Develop and enhance features for signature engines, header security, CSRF, WAF scripting, and API security.
Enhance debugging and unit testing tools for web security features.
Provide expertise on web security event responses and conduct internal training.
Improve cloud deployment features and intelligence databases to reduce false positives and evasion cases.
Design new features and contribute to product roadmaps with the Product Management team.
Deliver high-quality features by working with R&D and QA throughout the product development lifecycle.
Research new technologies and industry tools to devise innovative solutions.

What we're looking for

8+ years of relevant work experience.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical program.
Proficiency in C language and Linux development tools such as gcc, gdb, libc, and GNU Makefiles.
Solid knowledge of HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 protocols and experience with Linux networking troubleshooting.
Familiarity with network firewalls, IDS/IPS, VPN, SSL, WAF, and ADC.
Hands-on experience developing in common web servers and proxies like Nginx, Apache, or Haproxy.
Understanding of web technologies (HTML/CSS/JS/JSON/XML) and common security issues like OWASP Top 10.
Experience with security detecting, penetration testing, and web crawling tools (preferred).

Similar roles

Staff Software Development Engineer

Fortinet

Sunnyvale, CA 167 days ago $150,000–$215,000

C Linux Nginx Apache HAProxy HTTP HTTPS HTTP2 HTML CSS JavaScript JSON XML SQL ModSecurity Snort Burp Suite OWASP ZAP Metasploit Sqlmap Selenium Puppeteer gcc gdb libc GNU Makefile WAF IDS IPS VPN SSL ADC OWASP Top 10 Unit Testing

8+ yrs exp

Save

Staff Software Development Engineer

Fortinet

Sunnyvale, CA 116 days ago $150,000–$200,000

C Linux Unix U-boot Linux Driver Hardware Bring up SDK Porting Software Development Fundamentals

8+ yrs exp

Save

Staff Software Development Engineer

Adobe

San Jose, CA 20 days ago $159,200–$301,600

Java Scala Go Python Microservices Kubernetes Docker CI/CD GitOps Distributed Systems Event-Driven Architecture Cloud-Native Observability Generative AI High-Availability Systems

10+ yrs exp

Save

Staff Software Development Engineer

CVS Health

Remote (IL) +48 56 days ago $106,605–$284,280

Java Generative AI Agentic AI Microservices CI/CD AngularJS JavaScript Oracle NoSQL NLP Cloud Computing Full Stack Development Agile

7+ yrs exp Remote

Save

Staff Software Development Engineer

CVS Health

Remote (CA) +48 49 days ago $106,605–$284,280

SQL PostgreSQL SQL Server Azure AWS GCP Kafka REST APIs Protobuf gRPC Docker Kubernetes Terraform CI/CD Agile New Relic Distributed Systems

5+ yrs exp Remote

Save

Staff Software Development Engineer

CVS Health

Remote (Utah) +48 11 days ago $106,605–$284,280

React TypeScript Python Node.js Java Go C# AWS Azure GCP Kubernetes Docker Terraform CI/CD PostgreSQL MongoDB GraphQL REST LangChain Apache Kafka RabbitMQ D3.js OpenAI Anthropic

7+ yrs exp Remote

Save