Staff Software Engineer (Backend)
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- As a Staff Software Backend Engineer, you will build and scale the core application logic, streaming pipelines, and data layers that power our real-time AI tracking platform
- You will focus on the intersection of backend service architecture and data engineering—ensuring high-frequency telemetry data is ingested via streaming queues, accurately modeled, and reliably served to downstream web apps and AI models
- Design, develop, and maintain high-performance backend systems, microservices, and APIs alongside real-time data pipelines
- Implement stateful stream-processing applications to clean, transform, and window high-frequency telemetry and event data
- Architect robust data models and schemas optimized for low-latency writes and fast real-time queries across relational, time-series, and caching layers
- Collaborate cross-functionally with frontend and AI/data science to expose clean, structured data and integrated AI insights via scalable APIs
- Participate in the full software development lifecycle, including writing integration tests, code reviews, deployment, and monitoring pipeline health
- Investigate, debug, and optimize application bottlenecks, data serialization overhead, and query performance in production
- Understanding of data modeling concepts related to relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL) and in-memory data structures (e.g., Redis/Valkey)
- Proficiency in Java, Python and/or Rust to build backend services
- Able to leverage AI coding assistants to increase velocity while fully understanding and taking absolute ownership of all backend code and schemas you commit
- Familiarity with containerization (Docker) and modern cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Strong problem-solving skills and a collaborative mindset to handle the complexities of real-time data flow
- Awareness of distributed messaging systems and event-driven architectures, such as Apache Pulsar or Kafka
- BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with a balanced focus on backend systems and data pipeline development
- Experience with column-oriented or time-series data storage and analytical file formats (e.g., Parquet)
- Familiarity with geographic/spatial data processing and mapping APIs
- Prior experience or a deep interest in aerospace, aviation, or high-throughput tracking systems
- Basic understanding of Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and GitOps workflows