Senior Backend Engineer - Real-Time Telemetry & Fleet Ops

Seasats; San Diego (CA); Hybrid; USD 165,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Competitive insurance

401k matching

Four free lunches per week

Employee activity fund

Pet-friendly office

Unlimited/Flex PTO

Job summary

Seasats is seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer in San Diego, CA to design and scale backend systems for real-time telemetry ingestion, APIs, and time-series/geospatial data modeling. You will own services end-to-end and help shape backend architecture.

Join Seasats to advance maritime robotics, improve fleet telemetry pipelines, and collaborate across vehicle software and UI teams while mentoring peers and driving reliability at scale.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or a similar language.
• Strong security principles and implementation.
• Experience with REST and/or streaming APIs.
• Relational DB expertise (PostgreSQL preferred) and time-series/geospatial data modeling.
• Cloud infrastructure experience for reliability and cost at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own backend services for telemetry ingestion at fleet scale.
• Architect APIs for internal tools, dashboards, and integrations with low latency.
• Model data for high-volume time-series and geospatial use cases.
• Create resilient systems for intermittent connectivity and data delays at sea.
• Improve scalability, observability, and reliability of existing services.
• Collaborate with vehicle software and UI teams to integrate data sources.
• Mentor engineers and help set backend direction and best practices.

Skills

Backend design

REST APIs

Distributed systems

Python/Go

Tools

PostgreSQL

TimescaleDB

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Role: Senior Backend Software Engineer

Location: San Diego, CA (in-office)

Salary Range: $165,000 - $220,000 / yr + stock options, 401k matching, and other benefits

Role Overview:

Seasats' vehicles operate for months at a time, often thousands of miles from land, and every one of them is streaming telemetry, health data, and mission state back to shore. The backend systems that ingest, store, and serve that data are the backbone of how we operate our fleet, support our customers, and keep our vehicles safe.

We're looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer to help design and scale our systems to include real-time telemetry ingestion pipelines, APIs and services that power our fleet management platform and customer integrations. You'll help shape how Seasats' backend infrastructure evolves as our fleet, and the data it generates, grows.

Role Details:

As a senior member of the team, you'll help inform technical direction and raise the bar for how we build software at Seasats. On a day-to-day / week-to-week basis, you will:

• Design, build, and own backend services that ingest, process, and store real-time and historical vehicle telemetry at fleet scale
• Architect APIs that expose vehicle and mission data to internal tools, customer dashboards, and integrations, with an eye toward reliability and low latency
• Design data models and storage strategies for high-volume, time-series, and geospatial data
• Build systems that are resilient to the realities of maritime operations: intermittent connectivity, delayed or out-of-order data, and edge cases at sea
• Improve the scalability, observability, and reliability of existing backend services as fleet size and data volume grow
• Collaborate with the vehicle software and UI teams to integrate new data sources and capabilities
• Help inform technical direction and best practices for backend architecture, and mentor other engineers

About You:

• 8+ years of professional backend software engineering experience, with a track record of designing and scaling production systems
• Strong proficiency in Python
• Strong experience in security principles and implementation
• Deep experience designing REST and/or streaming (WebSocket, MQTT) APIs
• Strong experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred) and time-series/geospatial data modeling
• Experience with cloud infrastructure, including designing for reliability and cost at scale
• Experience with distributed systems concepts: queuing, caching, eventual consistency, and handling unreliable networks
• Demonstrated ability to independently scope and lead backend projects
• Strong technical communication skills

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience building telemetry or IoT data pipelines for robotics, autonomous vehicles, or remote sensor fleets
• Familiarity with message queues/streaming platforms
• Experience with time-series databases (TimescaleDB, InfluxDB) or geospatial extensions (PostGIS)
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and container orchestration (Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes)
• Exposure to maritime, defense, or other real-time mission-critical systems

About Seasats:

At Seasats, we're passionate about delivering maritime robotics solutions to redefine the maritime industry. Our primary products are unmanned surface vessels (USVs), designed to carry sensors at sea for months at a time. Our USVs provide persistent monitoring and data acquisition to defense, scientific, and commercial customers, and have autonomously crossed both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. After thousands of years in which the only way to gather information from the ocean was to put people on a boat, these uncrewed vessels are transforming how humanity monitors and interacts with the ocean. Here, you'll find the space and opportunity to do your life's best work.

Along with your salary, you'll receive perks including:

• Stock options
• Competitive insurance (including a 99% employer-covered Gold HMO plan or other options)
• 401k matching up to 4% of salary
• Four free lunches per week
• An employee activity fund
• A pet-friendly office
• Unlimited/Flex PTO

Hiring Notes:

When applying, you'll be asked to provide a resume and answer a few screening questions.

Please note that we are currently unable to sponsor employment visas, so candidates must be independently authorized to work in the United States.

We appreciate diverse perspectives and life experiences, and we're committed to building a team that reflects a wide range of backgrounds. Seasats provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination of any type based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or local law.

We look forward to reviewing your application!