Beckend Engineer Intern - Placement Year 2026

About Us:

Proofpoint is a global leader in human- and agent-centric cybersecurity. We protect how people, data, and AI agents connect across email, cloud, and collaboration tools. Over 80 of the Fortune 100, 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations trust Proofpoint to stop threats, prevent data loss, and build resilience across their people and AI workflows. Our mission is simple: safeguard the digital world and empower people to work securely and confidently.

Join us in our pursuit to defend data and protect people.

At Proofpoint you’ll be part of a global team that breaks barriers to redefine cybersecurity guided by our BRAVE core values:

• Bold in how we dream and innovate
• Responsive to feedback, challenges and opportunities
• Accountable for results and best in class outcomes
• Visionary in future focused problem-solving
• Exceptional in execution and impact

Proofpoint is a leading cybersecurity company protecting organizations’ greatest assets and biggest risks: vulnerabilities in people. With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber‑attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 1000, rely on Proofpoint for people‑centric security and compliance solutions mitigating their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web.

We are singularly devoted to helping our customers protect their greatest assets and biggest security risk: their people. That’s why we’re a leader in next‑generation cybersecurity.

Protection Starts with People. Proofpoint.

We’re looking for a number of early‑career Backend Software Engineers to join the Proofpoint Tessian Engineering Group across multiple core teams. The Tessian product offers inbound threat defence software, via API, to Microsoft or Google e‑mail platforms, as well as a data loss prevention (DLP) service that utilises Machine Learning for maximum protection. You’ll join at an exciting time as we scale our services and expand our reach.

Expect to collaborate with passionate engineers across multiple teams, help us integrate deeper into the Proofpoint ecosystem, and scale to protect even more customers.

We are seeking candidates with experience in our tech stack (particularly Python), but don't worry if you don't feel like an exact match. We always welcome great candidates who show potential over ticking boxes.

Backend: Python-based microservices

Cloud: AWS

Databases: Dynamo

DB, PostgreSQL

Infrastructure: Terraform

Dev Ops: Docker, Circle

CI, Git Hub

In our Tessian teams, we deeply embrace the Dev Ops culture, as we design, build, test, deploy and monitor our services. Our day to day involves improving services scalability and reliability, researching security vulnerabilities and implementing security measures, and monitoring production environments to discover what is next for the team using product data.

Our research also includes ways to improve user experience when using our products Outlook clients (desktop and OWA) on both Windows and Mac platforms and to help hardening the Human Security Layer.

We also pride ourselves in our commitment to personal growth, so expect to be challenged every day! We have outstanding mentorship, training and guidance to help you fulfil your potential. You will be supported at every step as you grow into these responsibilities.

You’ll have the opportunity to:

• Work on problems of diverse scope where analysis of data requires evaluation of identifiable factors.
• Demonstrate good judgment in selecting methods and techniques for obtaining solutions.
• Collaborate with supportive senior engineers who value your input, while also taking initiative on tasks that help you grow.
• Ship code to production with confidence using CI/CD.
• Tackle the challenges that come with processing sensitive data.
• Learn to build with security in mind.
• Make your mark on ambitious projects.

Our standards around security, quality, and service availability can only be the highest, but…