Staff/Principal Software Engineer - Backend

The Role

This company builds AI software that turns unstructured sensor data into real-time intelligence for critical applications, running on semi-autonomous platforms. Backed by significant funding from leading VCs, they're growing rapidly and led by senior engineers from top-tier AI labs and tech companies.

This is the senior end of backend engineering. You won't be executing inside an existing design; you'll be setting technical direction across genuinely unusual constraints: intermittent connectivity, resource-constrained embedded compute, air-gapped fleets, low-trust networks. This is a rare seat to define the playbook for systems in active service, not just deliver within one team.

What You'll Do

• Define how a fleet of semi-autonomous platforms maintains coherence when parts are unreachable for hours.
• Architect software versioning and deployment over low-bandwidth radio links.
• Establish trust boundaries and graceful degradation strategies for networks you cannot conventionally secure.
• Drive technical direction through RFCs, owning architectural decisions for systems operating under extreme real-world constraints, often with high-stakes consequences.
• Solve problems across a Rust and Python stack where the person relying on the system is in a high-stress situation.

Who You Are

• You've owned architecture and technical direction across multiple teams or business lines, not just delivered within one.
• Deep authority in edge computing, latency, distributed systems at scale, or serious platform engineering, with production systems to prove it.
• Experience building backend systems in Rust, Java, Go, or C++, making hard reliability trade-offs in production.
• You raise the engineering bar: you mentor, review, write RFCs that change minds, and prioritize unblocking others over shipping your own code.
• You treat ethical considerations as inseparable from engineering, comfortable working in a domain with active, ongoing debate.

Why Apply Through Dex

This is a rare role, not one you'll find by cold-applying. Sign up to Dex once, and we'll match you to this opportunity and others like it, skipping the usual application black hole. We'll brief you properly before any interview, so you know exactly what you're getting into.