Software Engineer, Real-Time Systems (Early Career)

Summary

Swarm Aero is building swarming unmanned aircraft and a Command & Control platform for coordinating autonomous systems at scale. The Software Engineer will develop real-time, distributed systems for aircraft swarms, working across interfaces and backend services to take features from design through deployment.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship features in the C2 system that directs swarms of heterogeneous aircraft
• Work on systems that hold state and stay responsive when comms degrade or drop entirely
• Move between the interface layer and the services behind it, following the problem rather than a job description
• Prototype new ways to represent and control vehicle telemetry, sensor data, and scheduling
• Take features end to end, from a rough problem statement through design, implementation, and deployment
• Ship early and often, backed by strong CI/CD, QA, and DevSecOps

Skills

• Degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent self-taught depth
• Real strength in fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, concurrency, networking, systems
• Evidence you've built something hard because you wanted to. A renderer, an emulator, a game, a compiler, a multiplayer server, a robotics project, a serious open source contribution. We care more about what you've built than where you worked
• Comfort writing code at more than one layer of the stack, and no strong attachment to staying at one
• Willingness to work on problems where the right answer isn't known yet, and to be wrong in public on the way to finding it
• Applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State
• Competitive programming background (ICPC, IOI, Codeforces, USACO, Putnam)
• Game development, game jams, engine work, or simulation
• Performance-sensitive work: profiling, frame budgets, memory pressure, running on constrained hardware
• Real-time or distributed systems experience: multiplayer netcode, streaming, pub/sub, robotics middleware
• Graphics: WebGL, OpenGL, Vulkan, shaders
• Working fluency in Go, C++, or Rust
• Familiarity with video streaming protocols or geospatial applications

Qualifications

Must Haves

• Degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent self-taught depth
• Real strength in fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, concurrency, networking, systems
• Evidence you've built something hard because you wanted to. A renderer, an emulator, a game, a compiler, a multiplayer server, a robotics project, a serious open source contribution. We care more about what you've built than where you worked
• Comfort writing code at more than one layer of the stack, and no strong attachment to staying at one
• Willingness to work on problems where the right answer isn't known yet, and to be wrong in public on the way to finding it
• applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State

Nice to Haves

• Competitive programming background (ICPC, IOI, Codeforces, USACO, Putnam)
• Game development, game jams, engine work, or simulation
• Performance-sensitive work: profiling, frame budgets, memory pressure, running on constrained hardware
• Real-time or distributed systems experience: multiplayer netcode, streaming, pub/sub, robotics middleware
• Graphics: WebGL, OpenGL, Vulkan, shaders
• Working fluency in Go, C++, or Rust
• Familiarity with video streaming protocols or geospatial applications

Benefits

• Meaningful equity in a high-growth defense technology company
• Medical, dental, vision, and 401k
• PTO and paid sick leave
• Monthly wellness stipend
• Daily catered lunch (office)
• Paid parental leave
• Direct impact on a critical national security mission
• A world-class team of engineers and operators solving genuinely hard problems