Ocean Career: Saildrone Platform Software Engineer

Saildrone is a defense company delivering maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance products to military, homeland security, and commercial customers. Saildrone unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) are extreme-endurance platforms equipped with advanced sensors and proprietary AI to provide persistent insights above and below the sea surface. Insights that support border security, law enforcement, undersea infrastructure protection, hydrography, and naval power applications. With more than 2,000,000 nautical miles sailed and 50,000 days at sea, Saildrone USVs are trusted by governments across the planet and set the standard for cost-efficient maritime intelligence in the world's harshest environments.

The Role

The Platform team manages the foundational systems that keep our fleet running and enable our customer deliverables. The team is responsible for customer-facing APIs, authentication and authorization systems, automated drone configuration, fleet monitoring systems and much more! With our wide swath of ownership, this team is critical to the growth of our company, meaning your impact will be immediately felt.

As part of this role, you’ll lead complex, multi-team projects, make critical architectural decisions, and ensure the stability and scalability of our platform. Beyond high-level responsibilities, we’re seeking an engineer who’s hands-on and ready to dive in to help us build faster.

Required Skills and Experience

  • 7+ years of professional software development experience
  • BA/BS in related field or equivalent experience
  • Proven ability to lead multi-team projects
  • Experience in mentoring senior engineers, fostering both technical and professional growth.
  • Strong expertise in Python and/or TypeScript.
  • Mastery of programming theory and practical application.
  • Fluency in code design patterns and their appropriate use cases.
  • Experience with Event Driven and Microservice architectures
  • Extensive experience with REST APIs, microservices, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, SNS/SQS, Lambda).
  • Experience with authentication and authorization mechanisms (e.g. OAuth, OIDC, API Gateways)
  • Mastery of relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL.
  • Knowledge of Kubernetes and container orchestration.

Desired Skills and Experience

  • Proficiency with Linux/Unix environments
  • Experience with infrastructure automation tools (ideally Ansible).
  • Experience with gRPC and Protobuf
  • Familiarity with frameworks like Hapi (JavaScript), Django REST (Python), and FastAPI (Python).


Location: This position is hybrid in Alameda, CA. Our waterfront office offers beautiful views of San Francisco Bay in always sunny Alameda.

Salary range: $149,400–$198,000 annually

Learn more about this opportunity and how to apply.

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