Software Engineer, Cloud

About the company

Our client is a well-funded maritime defense company that designs and operates autonomous surface vessels — uncrewed boats that cross oceans for months at a time, gathering sensor data. Founded in 2014 and having raised around $300M, it began in ocean and climate intelligence and has moved decisively toward national security work; a major defense prime invested $50M in 2025. The software organisation is being rebuilt under a new VP of Software who came from the electric-vehicle world, and this role sits on a brand-new fleet engineering team.

The role

You would design, build and operate the production cloud services that ingest, process, store and expose sensor, detection and operational data coming off the fleet. The hard part is not throughput for its own sake: the vessels have intermittent connectivity, so the services have to cope with delayed and incomplete data and still give operators something they can act on. You would own projects across several repositories in an existing codebase — debugging it, refactoring it and improving it as it scales — and lead data model and database design for operational and sensor data. The work is roughly 80 to 90% backend and platform: Python and TypeScript services and APIs, deployed, monitored and debugged in AWS, with reliability, scalability and observability as the standing concerns. You would work directly with the team's hiring manager and with front-end teammates.

What you'll do

• Build and operate production cloud services that ingest, process, store and expose sensor, detection and operational data from a fleet of autonomous vessels
• Write Python and TypeScript backend services and APIs that connect vessels with intermittent connectivity to the applications operators use
• Own projects across multiple repositories in an existing codebase — debug it, refactor it and improve it as it scales
• Lead data model and database design for operational and sensor data
• Deploy, monitor and debug in AWS, and improve reliability, scalability and observability
• Make delayed or incomplete data from the fleet behave sensibly for the people relying on it

Nice to have

• Streaming or real-time data systems
• Telemetry, sensor or geospatial data
• Internet of things, robotics, autonomous vehicles, aerospace or defense
• Distributed physical systems, where the hardware and the software fail in different ways

Tech stack

Python and TypeScript across backend platform services and APIs, on AWS, with relational databases behind operational and sensor data. The existing codebase spans several repositories and carries real legacy, which is much of the reason the role exists — a good part of the job is changing code you did not write, safely. The split is roughly 80 to 90% backend and platform work, with some front-end collaboration rather than front-end ownership.

Compensation & logistics

• $145k–$300k base, with equity built into core compensation
• Hybrid in Alameda, California — three days a week in the office
• You must already live in the San Francisco Bay Area; there is no relocation support for this role
• The client cannot sponsor a visa, so you need to be legally authorized to work in the US without visa sponsorship now or in the future
• This is defense work, and the team asks candidates directly how they feel about that
• One hire on this role, on a newly formed fleet engineering team
• Interview process: a 30-minute recruiter screen, a 45-minute technical screen in Python or TypeScript, then an on-site day with a 30-minute presentation on a project of your choosing and three or four technical interviews covering backend and platform work, APIs, and debugging across repositories in a legacy codebase
• Full-time