Manufacturing, Engineering Services

Senior Software Engineer (Backend)

San Francisco, CAOnsiteFull Time$140,000–$240,000 /yrPosted 2 months agoVisa sponsorship available

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Required skills

U.S. Person
U.S. citizen
permanent resident
security clearance

Nice to have

Python
Azure
Terraform
Kubernetes
CI/CD
TypeScript

Role summary

CHAOS Industries, a defense technology company funded with $1 billion, is seeking a Backend Software Engineer to join a small, collaborative team building the secure cloud platform for advanced radar systems. The role involves designing, building, and operating scalable Azure infrastructure and high-performance backend services for real-time sensor data processing. Responsibilities include defining infrastructure as code, automating deployments, ensuring reliability and security, and influencing platform architecture. The ideal candidate has strong engineering fundamentals, enjoys solving complex infrastructure and distributed systems challenges, and cares about operational excellence and building technology with real-world impact. Experience with Python, Azure, IaC, Kubernetes, or real-time data pipelines is a plus.

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with omniscient systems purpose-built for today’s realities. Designed and built by top U.S. military veterans and Silicon Valley innovators, CHAOS Industries’ products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats. In a world where technological threats move at unprecedented speed, CHAOS Industries delivers advanced sensing and detection solutions that give the ultimate advantage: time.

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised $1B in total funding from leading investors including 8VC, Accel, and NEA. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.

The Role

You'll join a small, highly collaborative team in San Francisco building the software behind some of the world's most advanced radar systems.Working alongside software, hardware, and systems engineers, and the teams who take these systems into the field, you'll design the backend services and data pipelines that turn raw sensor data into decisions people can act on.We're looking for builders who learn quickly and enjoy hard distributed systems and real-time data problems.

What You'll Build

Edge-to-Cloud Data Delivery - robust, low-latency systems that move sensor data from radars in the field, often over constrained bandwidth, to the services and operators that depend on it.

Backend Services - high-performance Python (FastAPI) services that ingest, process, and distribute real-time sensor data reliably and securely at scale.

Live and Replay Data - the streaming, storage, and replay of detections, tracks, and telemetry that power high-speed live views and playback of 3D geospatial data fused from multiple sensors.

Fleet Orchestration - the coordination and decision-making layer that optimizes how a growing fleet of sensors operates as conditions in the field change.

Platform Architecture - help shape the technical direction of the platform, making architectural decisions that support new capabilities, increasing scale, and long-term maintainability.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for exceptional software engineers who are excited by hard technical problems and building systems that matter. Beyond our core stack, we care more about strong engineering fundamentals, curiosity, and the ability to learn quickly than about any specific technology.

You'll thrive in this role if you:

Have strong production experience building backend services in Python (FastAPI or similar).

Have built real-time or streaming data systems - message queues, WebSockets, time-series data - and enjoy hard distributed systems problems.

Have owned a production system end to end - designed it, shipped it, and fixed it when it broke.

Are eager to learn new technologies and adapt to new technical domains.

Care deeply about reliability, security, and scalability.

Get real leverage from AI coding tools, with a considered view on what to delegate to them and what not to.

Communicate well and enjoy collaborating across teams.

Experience in any of the following is a plus:

Building geospatial or 3D data visualizations in TypeScript and React.

Edge computing, or moving data reliably over constrained or unreliable networks.

Azure or another major cloud platform.

Hardware, sensors, robotics, telemetry, or defense systems.

Requirements

Must be a U.S. Person (U.S. citizen or permanent resident), as required for access to controlled technology.

Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.

Based in, or willing to relocate to, the San Francisco Bay Area. This role is onsite in our SF office.

Why CHAOS?

Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company

Additional benefits: 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more

Our Perks: Free daily lunch, ‘No meeting Fridays’, unlimited PTO, casual dress code

Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses

Team Growth: 250 employees and counting across 5 global offices

$140k-240k

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.

Recruiting Agencies: CHAOS Industries does not accept unsolicited resumes or outreach. Unsolicited submissions will not be reviewed or compensated.

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