Backend Software Engineer, Weather & Aviation

Spire Government; Boulder (CO); Hybrid; USD 171,000 - 203,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Name Your Satellite Program (NYSP)

Launch Attendance

Generous Time Off Policy

Education Assistance Program

Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)

Family Leave

Fitness Reimbursement

Healthy snacks & beverages

Job summary

Spire Global in Boulder, CO, is seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer to build scalable AWS services and secure, low-latency data APIs for weather and aviation data.

You will design auth, improve observability, and lead technical initiatives while mentoring peers and collaborating with product and data science teams.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional backend development with production systems.
• Proven track record of improving uptime and handling growth.
• Deep AWS experience and infrastructure-as-code proficiency.
• Strong knowledge of OIDC/OAuth2 and token management.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve AWS-based backend services for reliability and performance.
• Design authentication using OIDC/OAuth2 and service-to-service auth.
• Develop REST APIs and streaming endpoints delivering weather and aviation data.
• Improve observability with metrics, logging, and tracing; define SLOs.
• Participate in on-call rotations and incident response as part of the team.
• Apply secure engineering practices meeting NIST/ISO standards.
• Lead projects technically from design to rollout and mentor peers.

Skills

Backend engineering

AWS cloud

OIDC OAuth2

REST & streaming APIs

Python/Go/Java/Node.js

Documentation & collaboration

Tools

ECS/EKS

Lambda

API Gateway

RDS/Aurora

DynamoDB

S3

IAM

Terraform/CDK/CFN

Job description

Location

• Boulder
• Colorado
• United States

Department

• Engineering

What You'll Do As a Senior Backend Software Engineer

• Build and improve AWS-based backend services with a focus on availability, fault tolerance, and performance as load grows
• Design and implement authentication and authorization features using OIDC and OAuth 2.0, including token handling, service-to-service auth, and access control
• Develop and maintain the REST APIs and streaming endpoints (e.g., WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, or Kinesis/Kafka-backed feeds) that deliver Spire's weather and aviation data to customers
• Improve observability across metrics, logging, and tracing, and help define and track SLOs for the services you own
• Share ownership of production operations, including participation in an on-call rotation, incident response, and postmortems, as part of an engineering team that runs what it builds
• Apply secure engineering practices day to day, and help our systems meet the NIST and ISO/IEC 27001 standards we operate under
• Take the technical lead on projects within your area, from design through rollout
• Mentor other engineers through code reviews, pairing, and design discussions
• Contribute to team practices for testing, deployment, infrastructure-as-code, and change management
• Collaborate closely with product owners and data scientists to align backend services with customer and mission needs
• Create and maintain clear documentation for APIs and system architectures

Basic Skills/Qualifications

• 6+ years' experience in professional backend software development, with significant time operating and scaling production systems that customers rely on
• A track record of taking systems from "working" to "reliable": improving uptime, reducing incidents, and handling growth in data volume, traffic, or customers
• Strong hands-on experience with AWS (e.g., ECS/EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, S3, IAM, VPC networking) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CDK, or CloudFormation)
• Strong knowledge of OIDC and OAuth 2.0, including identity providers (e.g., Cognito, Okta, Auth0, Keycloak), JWT handling, and secure session and token management
• Experience designing and operating both REST APIs and streaming or real-time data endpoints
• Experience working in environments governed by NIST or ISO/IEC 27001 security standards, with an understanding of how they shape engineering decisions
• Proficiency in Python or another backend language such as Go, Java, or TypeScript/Node.js
• Excellent documentation, collaboration, and communication skills, and comfort making and defending architectural trade-offs

Nice To Have

• Experience with the Pangeo ecosystem (xarray, Dask, Zarr, Jupyter) or other large-scale scientific and geospatial data tooling
• Background in the weather or aviation domains, including familiarity with data formats such as GRIB2 and NetCDF, aviation products such as METAR/TAF or ADS-B, or regulatory contexts such as the FAA

Base Salary Range

$171,000—$202,500 USD

Global Perks

• Name Your Satellite Program (NYSP)
• Launch Attendance
• Generous Time Off Policy
• Education Assistance Program
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Family Leave
• Fitness Reimbursement
• Employee Referral ProgramHealthy snacks & beverages in every office

About Spire

We improve life on Earth with data from space.

Spire Global is a space-to-cloud analytics company that owns and operates the largest multi-purpose constellation of satellites. Its proprietary data and algorithms provide the most advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking in the world. In addition to its constellation, Spire’s data infrastructure includes a global ground station network and 24/7 operations that provide real‑time global coverage of every point on Earth.

Spire is Global and our success draws upon the diverse viewpoints, skills and experiences of our employees. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status.

To help maintain a safe and secure workplace for Spire employees, all candidates who receive a conditional offer will be required to complete a background check. This may include criminal history and employment verification.

Please take a moment to review Spire's Global Data Privacy Notice for Employees, Contractors, Candidates and Visitors, as well as Spire's Privacy Policy.

Kindly be advised that communication regarding your application may come from @spire.com, @recruiting.spire.com, or from Candidate.fyi (our scheduling tool).

Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.

Access to US export‑controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying.

In addition to base compensation, this role is eligible for commissions and annual equity awards. This role is also eligible for our employee benefits program, including vacation, sick, and personal time off; optional medical, dental, vision, life, and disability coverage; a 401(K) plan; health and wellness reimbursement program; and participation in Spire’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan.