Malware & Abuse Engineer

Kinsta is one of the top providers of managed hosting for WordPress, with a growing club of 120,000+ businesses including startups, universities, and Fortune 500 firms. We’re motivated by excellent quality and proud to have received a 97% satisfaction rating from our customers.

That's because, to us, each day is a chance to grow. As a team, we continuously inspire each other to learn new and better ways to make an impact. We own our jobs proudly - our leaders don't hold our hands, but they're in our corner whenever we ask for help - and our environment is flexible and remote-first.

As our new Malware & Abuse Engineer, you'll ensure platform integrity by monitoring and remediating malware, spam, and abuse issues, playing a critical role in protecting our customers and keeping them informed every step of the way. The ideal Kinsta Malware & Abuse Engineer is technically knowledgeable, upbeat, professional, curious, and self-motivated.

This role's shift needs are within EMEA time zones (our team uses UTC for scheduling).

What You'll Do:

• Monitor, investigate, and resolve malware, spam, and IP blocklisting issues, as well as DMCA notices, while keeping customers informed.
• Investigate and resolve malware situations escalated from the Support team.
• Write and document new malware signature rules for our customer scanning tools.
• Document processes and workflows for remediating malware infections and requesting the removal of blocklisted IP addresses.
• Monitor internal tools to identify instances of spam email sending and IP address blocklisting, and alert customers to these issues as necessary.
• Provide ongoing feedback and work with internal teams to improve malware detection and remediation tools.
• Receive, validate, and process DMCA notices and counternotices.
• Monitor internal tools to identify users who misuse Kinsta's platform or use excessive resources.
• Collaborate with internal teams to gather the information customers need to resolve resource overuse or platform abuse, and monitor customer progress towards resolution.
• Collaborate with internal teams to recommend plan upgrades for customers facing resource constraints.
  
  

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What You Bring To The Role:

• You are completely fluent in English with excellent written communication skills.
• Experience detecting, investigating, and resolving intricate malware infections present primarily within PHP and JavaScript.
• Experience writing and applying regular expressions.
• Familiarity with WordPress: database structure, file/directory structure, wp-config.php directives, and common malware vectors.
• Comfort working in a command line environment, as much of our tooling is command line based.
• Consummate professionalism: we're a distributed team and we expect you to act like the professional we know you are. That means excellent communication, rock-solid reliability, and the drive to bring your best effort to bear on your work every single day.
  
  
  

Bonus if you have experience with:

• Have previous experience in web hosting and/or WordPress technical support.
• Have an understanding of and experience with the following technologies: Linux, NGINX, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP, DNS, CDN, and caching (object and page).
• Have experience investigating, determining the source of, and resolving outbound email spam processes and other platform abuse situations.
  
  
  

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Benefits:

• Annual remote expense budget.
• Flexible PTO.
• Paid parental leave.
• Annual professional development budget: available after one year with Kinsta.
• Sabbatical: available after three years with Kinsta (and every three years thereafter).
• Location-specific healthcare benefits (includes vision and dental) for employees hired in the USA, UK, Canada, and Hungary.
• Pension plan for employees hired in the UK, and 401k contributions for employees hired in the USA.
  
  
  

Kinsta is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate and we will take actions to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, citizenship, age, religion, creed, disability, marital status, veteran’s status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

By applying to one of our positions, you agree to the processing of the submitted personal data in accordance with Kinsta's Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your data to the United States.

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We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.