Software Engineer - Backend

Nominal; New York (NY); On-site; USD 130,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance

Unlimited PTO and sick leave

Free lunch, snacks, and coffee

Professional Development Stipend

In-office hardware lab with a $250 project stipend

Annual company retreat

Job summary

A cutting-edge technology company in New York is looking for a Backend Software Engineer to design and build distributed infrastructure for their telemetry platform. This role requires 3+ years of experience in building distributed systems with strong expertise in Go, Rust, or Java. The ideal candidate will work on optimizing reliability and scalability while collaborating closely with other engineers. Benefits include full medical coverage and unlimited PTO, with a competitive salary range of $130,000 to $230,000 per year.

Qualifications

• 3+ years building distributed systems focused on performance, reliability.
• Strong experience in Go, Rust, or Java.
• Deep familiarity with AWS, GCP, or Azure.

Responsibilities

• Design and build distributed infrastructure.
• Architect systems to process high-frequency telemetry.
• Optimize reliability and scalability as the system grows.

Skills

Distributed systems

Go

Cloud infrastructure

Data processing technologies

Technical communication

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

Job description

About Nominal

Nominal is building the connected test and operations platform powering the world's most advanced hardware systems, from spacecraft and autonomous vehicles to next-generation defense programs. Our platform gives hardware engineering teams a single place to ingest data, analyze performance, automate test execution, and collaborate across every phase of development, so they can move faster without sacrificing safety or precision. We're a fast-moving team that owns problems end-to-end, works across disciplines, and thrives at the intersection of hardware and software.

We serve top-tier commercial and defense customers, from autonomy leaders like Anduril and Shield AI to next-generation aerospace teams like Hermeus and REGENT, and performance engineering teams like Pratt Miller Motorsports, alongside mission partners within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force on programs where failure isn’t an option. We’re backed by Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Lightspeed. Our team draws from SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, and other leading companies, united by a common mission: giving hardware engineers the tools to build the future with speed, safety, and confidence.

About The Role

We're looking for a Backend Software Engineer; you’ll design and build the distributed infrastructure that powers Nominal’s telemetry and validation platform. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy working close to the metal of distributed systems — reasoning about throughput, latency, data models, and failure — and who want to see their work directly enable real-world hardware. You’ll own critical backend systems end-to-end, from ingestion pipelines to storage engines to performance tuning in production.

• Architect and evolve distributed systems that ingest, process, and persist high-frequency telemetry and sensor data.
• Design storage and indexing strategies for large, time-series, and event-driven datasets with strict performance and correctness requirements.
• Tackle hard problems around scalability, backpressure, fault tolerance, and data consistency in real-time systems.
• Optimize hot paths, reduce tail latency, and improve reliability as the system scales with new customers and use cases.
• Collaborate closely with product, infrastructure, and customer-facing engineers to solve domain-specific problems for cutting-edge hardware teams.
• Influence backend architecture and technical direction, mentoring teammates, and raising the bar for system design across the org.

We're looking for someone with

• 3+ years building distributed systems where performance, reliability, and operational simplicity matter.
• Strong experience in Go, Rust, or Java, with an emphasis on correctness, clarity, and long-lived systems.
• Deep familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and production tooling like Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform.
• Hands‑on experience designing or operating storage systems — time-series databases, columnar formats, or analytics engines (e.g., ClickHouse, TimescaleDB, Druid, InfluxDB, Parquet).
• Experience with streaming or data processing technologies such as Kafka, Apache Arrow, Flink, or Spark.
• Comfort reasoning about distributed systems tradeoffs — latency vs throughput, consistency vs availability, abstraction vs control.
• Clear technical communication and a bias toward ownership: you design it, build it, ship it, and operate it.

Benefits/Perks

• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Unlimited PTO and sick leave
• Free lunch, snacks, and coffee
• Professional Development Stipend
• In-office hardware lab with a $250 project stipend
• Annual company retreat

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.

ITAR Requirements.

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C.1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C.1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

Compensation: The base pay range for this role is $130,000 – $230,000 per year.