Software Engineer, Backend & Data

Vital Lyfe; California; On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Vital Lyfe, a California-based tech company redefining water autonomy, seeks a Software Engineer to own substantial backend and data systems. You’ll build data pipelines from manufacturing lines, extend cloud services, and ship end-to-end solutions across MES and handheld apps.

You’ll work with TypeScript, Python, React, and AWS, and join a small team as the first full-time software hire, shaping development practices and product direction in a fast-moving startup.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field or equivalent experience.
• 2 to 4 years building software professionally.
• Experience building and maintaining backend services or APIs in production.
• Strong programming fundamentals and comfort learning new systems quickly.
• Deep experience with at least one modern language, such as Python or TypeScript.
• Working knowledge of SQL and structured data.
• Comfortable in a codebase you didn’t write, and able to debug problems on your own.
• Practical and curious, with a habit of taking ownership and following through.
• Able to break down a problem, work through it, and know when to ask for help.
• Excited to work where software and hardware intersect.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain data pipelines that bring test and production data off the manufacturing line, validate and store it, and turn it into views our teams use to track yield and failures
• Build, extend, and maintain backend services and system integrations on our established cloud platform, keeping data reliable across the company
• Own what you build end to end: design, test, ship, debug, and keep it running in production
• Help shape design and implementation decisions that advance our technical roadmap
• Build and improve internal tools that give our engineering and operations teams real-time visibility into production and manufacturing workflows
• Contribute across the rest of our software, including our manufacturing execution system (MES) and the handheld app our floor teams use

Skills

Backend APIs

Data pipelines

Python

TypeScript

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

React

ERP/MES systems

Job description

About Vital Lyfe

Vital Lyfe is a tech company redefining water autonomy through innovation, creating a new category of personal water making technology built to scale where infrastructure can’t.

The Mission

We’re looking for a Software Engineer to help build the software behind a high-demand consumer hardware product. We’re spinning up manufacturing from scratch, scaling fast, and the software you work on will directly affect how we build, track, and deliver thousands of units.

This is the first full-time hire on our software team. You’ll work directly with our Head of Software, take ownership of a substantial area of our backend and data systems, and contribute across the tools and infrastructure that power our operations and help us scale.

What You’ll Do

• Build and maintain data pipelines that bring test and production data off the manufacturing line, validate and store it, and turn it into views our teams use to track yield and failures

• Build, extend, and maintain backend services and system integrations on our established cloud platform, keeping data reliable across the company

• Own what you build end to end: design, test, ship, debug, and keep it running in production

• Help shape design and implementation decisions that advance our technical roadmap

• Build and improve internal tools that give our engineering and operations teams real-time visibility into production and manufacturing workflows

• Contribute across the rest of our software, including our manufacturing execution system (MES) and the handheld app our floor teams use

Our stack includes TypeScript, Python, React, and AWS.

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience

• 2 to 4 years building software professionally

• Experience building and maintaining backend services or APIs in production

• Strong programming fundamentals and comfort learning new systems quickly

• Deep experience with at least one modern language, such as Python or TypeScript

• Working knowledge of SQL and structured data

• Comfortable in a codebase you didn’t write, and able to debug problems on your own

• Practical and curious, with a habit of taking ownership and following through

• Able to break down a problem, work through it, and know when to ask for help

• Excited to work where software and hardware intersect

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building data pipelines, including validating and cleaning messy real-world data

• Background in building user-facing interfaces with React or a similar frontend framework

• Experience with dashboards or data visualization tools

• Experience with AWS, especially serverless and infrastructure as code

• Experience with ERP, MES, or other manufacturing systems

• Interest in manufacturing, hardware-software integration, or IoT systems

Why Join Vital Lyfe?

• Be the first full-time hire on a new software team, with a hand in shaping how the team works

• Work on high-impact problems with global relevance

• Help scale breakthrough technology in water security and climate resilience

• Early ownership in a high growth, engineering led startup

• Join a tight knit, mission driven team in a fast-paced environment

• Build long term career equity as we grow

Location Requirement: Ability to work 100% onsite in Torrance, CA (remote or hybrid work will not be considered)

Vital Lyfe is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Vital Lyfe is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.