Staff Software Engineer - Backend

Meet one of your future colleagues! 

 

About Us: 

Xwing is a cutting-edge aerospace technology company focused on revolutionizing the future of aviation. Backed by industry veterans and top-tier investors, our mission is to build a safer, more efficient, and more accessible air transportation system powered by autonomous flight. By combining artificial intelligence, proprietary software, and hardware solutions, Xwing is bringing uncrewed aircraft to commercial aviation. We are computer scientists, roboticists, and aerospace experts who are at the forefront of the transformation of the aviation industry.

Founded in 2016, Xwing is based in Northern California with offices in San Francisco and in Concord, CA. In 2021, Xwing completed the world's first fully autonomous cargo flight with a remote crew supervising the flight from the ground. In 2023, Xwing became the first company with a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification project for an uncrewed aircraft system for large aircraft.  

Visit xwing.com to learn more, and see all available positions under "Careers" to join our rapidly growing team.

Who We’re Looking For:

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Staff Software Engineer (Backend) to join our dynamic team. You will play a crucial role in designing, developing, and maintaining high-performance backend services. Your work will directly support our company's flight mission control and monitoring stations, ensuring the smooth operation of critical systems.

Location:

Concord, CA hybrid or fully remote

Some Key Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, document, and maintain backend services for our autonomous flight mission control and monitoring stations.
• Provide mentorship and guidance to team members, fostering their professional growth and ensuring the delivery of high-quality software solutions.
• Review software requirements, design documents, test cases, and code to ensure adherence to compliance standards.
• Collaborate with your team and stakeholders to ensure timely and efficient software development, fostering effective communication and teamwork.
• Conduct thorough code reviews, offering constructive feedback to maintain code quality, scalability, and maintainability standards.
• Stay up-to-date with industry trends, technologies, and best practices, actively contributing to the improvement of software engineering processes within the team.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, architects, and front-end developers, to capture requirements and translate them into efficient and reliable backend solutions.
• Take ownership of the entire software development lifecycle, from design and implementation to testing, deployment, and maintenance.
• Architect and implement network communication protocols and APIs to enable seamless integration and communication between different components and systems.
• Develop robust and secure authentication and authorization mechanisms to ensure proper access controls and data protection.
• Design and optimize database lookup strategies for efficient data retrieval and storage, considering factors such as scalability, performance, and data consistency.
• Utilize event brokers, such as RabbitMQ, to enable asynchronous and decoupled communication between services, ensuring reliability and fault tolerance.
• Develop and implement software testing procedures, tools, tests, and methodologies to ensure compliance with aviation regulations and standards.

Required Qualifications: 

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong focus on backend design, development, and testing.
• Extensive hands-on experience in designing and implementing backend services, and demonstrated proficiency in service-oriented architecture.
• Experience developing software services in a statically typed, compiled, formally testable language such as Rust or C. 
• Solid understanding of network communication protocols and highly-available API design principles to support frontend clients as well as other backend services.
• Experience developing services that are portable between local development environments, on-premise servers, and the cloud.
• Strong problem-solving skills and meticulous attention to detail.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a demonstrated ability to work effectively in a team environment.
• Ability to thrive in a startup environment and navigate ambiguity.
• Solid understanding of software development best practices, including code versioning, testing, and deployment strategies.
• Experience designing and