Founding Software Engineer, Aviation AI Platform

Navi AI Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity ownership

Flight training

Visible impact

Leadership path

Job summary

Navi AI Inc. is seeking a founding engineer to own end-to-end systems—the backend, data pipelines, and interfaces used by pilots, instructors, and military operators. You will shape architecture and deploy production-ready solutions that ship to aviation partners and training environments.

You will lead critical design decisions, iterate rapidly on live feedback, and collaborate across hardware, AI/ML, and frontend teams to scale Navi's platform for real-world use.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Ability to lead projects end to end with minimal direction.
• Deep expertise in at least one core area (backend, infra, data, or full-stack).
• Experience designing scalable, reliable, and high-performance systems.
• Strong engineering judgment for build vs buy and scope tradeoffs.
• History of raising the bar through code reviews, mentorship, and best practices.
• Comfort with ambiguity and fast iteration while maintaining quality.
• Experience with modern data pipelines, real-time systems, or AI/ML integration.
• Built something from zero that people actually used.
• Experience with AWS, CI/CD, containerization, and modern deployment tooling.
• Translating operator needs into engineering decisions.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale the backend and data infrastructure powering Navi's AI platform.
• Collaborate with pilots, instructors, and military operators to create cockpit/classroom tools.
• Integrate flight dynamics, telemetry, and cockpit audio into debrief/training systems.
• Make architecture decisions that scale Navi's infrastructure and deployment.
• Ship code that goes live in aircraft and iterate on operator feedback.
• Interface with engineers across the stack from hardware to AI/ML to frontend.

Skills

Software engineering

End-to-end ownership

Backend systems

Distributed infrastructure

Data engineering

Full-stack development

System design

Engineering judgment

Mentorship

Ambiguity tolerance

Data pipelines

Real-time systems

AI/ML integration

Greenfield development

AWS

CI/CD

Containerization

Requirements gathering

Tools

AWS

CI/CD pipelines

Containerization

Job description

Navi AI Inc. is seeking a founding engineer to own end-to-end systems—the backend, data pipelines, and interfaces used by pilots, instructors, and military operators. You will shape architecture and deploy production-ready solutions that ship to aviation partners and training environments.

You will lead critical design decisions, iterate rapidly on live feedback, and collaborate across hardware, AI/ML, and frontend teams to scale Navi's platform for real-world use.