Vannevar Labs brings innovative, robust, and scalable software design to the public servants working in defense and national security keeping our country safe.
As a team, we exist because we believe in public service, and we think that our democracy and government improve only if we put serious, collective effort into improving them, including the technology our government uses.
Our flagship product is Decrypt, a software platform for collecting and processing foreign language text data with a UI for enabling users to quickly interpret the data. Over the last 12 months, we’ve deployed Decrypt to more than a dozen groups in the government. Decrypt is driving some of our most important military and foreign policy decisions by enabling our government partners to understand and respond to foreign actors in ways previously not possible.
In May of 2021 we raised a $12 million Series A investment from Costanoa Ventures and Point72, with General Catalyst participating, allowing us to take the next leap in our growth. We hope you will join us!
We are looking for a Backend Engineer to build and refine our data processing applications. You’ll be in charge of scraping the web for mission critical data and then building out pipelines for those data. We also do something common in Silicon Valley tech companies but radical in the defense space: we develop and test products side-by-side with our users, including on US military bases and remote locations abroad. Our engineering culture is about empathizing with users and building software products that deliver maximum mission impact.
As a founding member of the team your decisions today will have a large impact on the company today and into the future. We believe that simple systems are easier to understand, maintain, and scale - we prefer pragmatic, product-centric solutions. You are innovative: willing to take risks, think critically about novel solutions, and advocate for your ideas while seeking feedback and collaboration. You will be making trade-offs as you work to ensure that our systems are prepared to scale — being able to effectively communicate these trade-offs with your teammates is a must.
What You'll Do
- Develop innovative solutions scraping data from various online sources
- Work side-by-side with our mission team and product managers to ideate software solutions
- Design client-side and server-side architecture
- Develop and manage well-functioning databases and applications
- Write effective APIs
- Test software to ensure responsiveness and efficiency
- Write technical documentation
- Collaborate with analysts to improve software
Qualifications
- 2+ years as a Backend Engineer or similar role
- Experience with Python
- Familiarity with relational databases
- Excellent communication and teamwork skills
- Experience scraping data or a strong desire to learn
- U.S. Citizenship status is required as this position will require the ability to access U.S. only data systems
Additional Qualifications (Nice to haves)
- Experience with AWS
- Experience with ElasticSearch
- Experience with Docker
- Experiences with caching databases (e.g. Redis)
What We Offer
- Substantial equity + 401k match
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Open PTO
- Paid parental leave
- Flexible work environment - you manage your work day
- 100% remote - work from anywhere in the US
- Quarterly off-site travel for team-building (once it’s safe)
We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don’t feel like you're a perfect fit. If you’re passionate about working on problems that matter, we’d love to hear from you!