Software Engineer, Backend

BurnBot; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Health, dental, and vision

Flexible PTO

Job summary

BurnBot is hiring to own the backend that ingests telemetry, video, and logs from field machines and serves APIs for fleet management and customer reporting.

You will design and operate scalable storage and reporting systems, ensuring reliability for critical field operations and upstream customers across California and nearby states.

Qualifications

• 7+ years building and operating backend systems in production.
• Experience with distributed data pipelines and high-volume telemetry.
• Cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and infrastructure as code.
• Strong API design with time-series or geospatial data experience.
• Observability practices and instrumentation are essential.
• Pragmatic approach to intermittent connectivity when machines are offline.

Responsibilities

• Own the backend stack: ingest, storage, APIs, and reporting for field data.
• Ingest high-rate telemetry and large video/sensor payloads from field machines.
• Manage storage and cloud infrastructure, cost, and TB-scale retention.
• Develop treatment reporting that lands in customer workflows and compliance reports.
• Ensure reliability and observability; avoid downtime on critical field operations.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

API design

Observability

Offline-first

Job description

• Location 340 Shaw Rd, South San Francisco, CA, 94080, United States
• Base Pay $150,000.00 - $200,000.00 / Year
• Employee Type Exempt (FT)

About BurnBot

Wildfire has stopped being a season. BurnBot builds the machines that get ahead of it — remotely operated systems that apply and contain prescribed fire, and platforms that clear heavy fuel on terrain that isn’t safe for crews.

Our fleet is at work today for PG&E, CAL FIRE, the U.S. Forest Service, Caltrans, fire districts, and tribal nations across California, Oregon, and Washington — treating land at up to 40x the pace of conventional methods. We’re roboticists, engineers, and career fire practitioners. Hardware we design in South San Francisco is in the dirt within weeks, and the people who designed it are usually standing next to it.

THE ROLE

Every machine in the field produces telemetry, video, lidar, logs, and a record of exactly what got treated — and our agency and utility customers need that record to be right, because it’s what they report on.

You’ll own the backend that carries all of it: ingest, storage, APIs, and the reporting that turns a day of machine work into something a land manager can act on.

WHAT YOU’LL OWN

• Services and APIs behind our operator tools, fleet management, and customer reporting
• Ingest at field scale: high-rate telemetry plus large video and sensor payloads, from machines on links that drop
• Storage and infrastructure — cloud, cost, and the retention decisions that come with terabytes of field data
• Treatment reporting: acres, coverage, and verification our customers can defend to their own stakeholders
• Reliability and observability. When a crew is on a burn unit, our systems being down is not an inconvenience

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• 7+ years building and operating backend systems in production (Python, Go, Rust, TypeScript, or similar)
• Distributed systems and data pipeline experience, especially with high-volume time-series data
• Cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and infrastructure as code
• Solid API design instincts and real database depth, including time-series or geospatial (PostGIS) work
• Observability practice — you instrument first and guess second
• Pragmatism about intermittent connectivity. The machine is not always online, and the data still has to arrive

NICE TO HAVE

• Robotics, IoT, or connected-fleet data at scale
• Offline-first sync or store-and-forward architectures
• Geospatial data and mapping services
• Video or sensor-data pipelines
• Reporting for government or utility customers, and the compliance that comes with it

HOW WE WORK

• Based onsite in South San Francisco — design, build, and test all happen in one building, and being near the machines is most of the point
• Flexible within that. You own your calendar: work the hours where you’re sharpest, and go remote on heads‑down days.
• Expect a few days a month in the field across California, Oregon, and Washington. Watching your work run on a live burn is the best part of the job.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Base salary: $150,000 – $200,000 — final offers reflect experience and demonstrated scope.

• Equity — Incentive Stock Options
• Health, dental, and vision
• Flexible paid time off

Burnbot is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including but not limited to, pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with one or more disabilities, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

If you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [phone] x 1010 or [e-mail].