Staff Software Engineer, Backend
$172,800–$216,000 year
On-siteSan Jose, California, United States
Job Summary
Build and scale the core application logic, streaming pipelines, and data layers that power Archer's real-time AI tracking platform for its all-electric aircraft. Design, develop, and maintain high-performance backend systems, microservices, and APIs alongside real-time data pipelines to ingest, transform, and serve high-frequency telemetry data. Implement stateful stream-processing applications to clean and window event data, while architecting robust data models optimized for low-latency writes across relational, time-series, and caching layers. Collaborate cross-functionally to expose structured data and AI insights via scalable APIs, and participate in the full software development lifecycle including testing, code reviews, and deployment. Investigate and optimize application bottlenecks and query performance in production.
Required Qualifications
- 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
- Proficiency in Java, Python and/or Rust to build backend services
- Awareness of distributed messaging systems and event-driven architectures, such as Apache Pulsar or Kafka
- Understanding of data modeling concepts related to relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL) and in-memory data structures (e.g., Redis/Valkey)
- Familiarity with containerization (Docker) and modern cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Able to leverage AI coding assistants to increase velocity while fully understanding and taking absolute ownership of all backend code and schemas you commit
- Strong problem-solving skills and a collaborative mindset to handle the complexities of real-time data flow
Desired Qualifications
- 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
- Basic understanding of Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and GitOps workflows
- Prior experience or a deep interest in aerospace, aviation, or high-throughput tracking systems
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