Software Engineer (App)

ABOUT VIBRANT PLANET

We are a team of leaders in fire science, applied science, forestry, policy, and tech who work with land managers, community risk managers, utilities, and insurers to drive action that lowers the risk of destructive wildfire. Our cloud-based, AI-driven platform modernizes land management planning, community risk assessment, and monitoring through scenario building, decision support, and treatment outcome detection. Our fire science subsidiary, Pyrologix, produces leading wildfire science and models that quantify wildfire hazard and risk, and the benefits of mitigation action. This science powers the core Vibrant Planet platform and supports our work across utilities, insurance, and other sectors. Vibrant Planet is backed by climate and resilience leaders including Grantham Foundation, Earthshot, Elemental Excelerator, Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Cisco, and Halogen Ventures. For more information, visit vibrantplanet.net and pyrologix.com.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As an Application Engineer at Vibrant Planet, you will build and evolve our wildfire resilience platform and our utilities platform — the common operating picture that helps community protection, utility, and land management leaders make informed, coordinated decisions about wildfire and climate risk. Our decision support apps support thousands of mitigation plans designed to keep communities safer and ecosystems healthier. You'll work across our Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView/TypeScript stack and Postgres + Mapbox geospatial data layer to turn industry-leading fire science from Pyrologix and ForSys-powered scenario planning into intuitive tools land managers, fire districts, and utility planners rely on every day. You'll collaborate closely with Application Engineering, Product, Design, Data Engineering, Operations, Science, and Infrastructure to ship features that move our partners through the full Evaluate → Design → Implement → Learn → Adapt workflow.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design, build, and ship full-stack features across our Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView, JavaScript, and Postgres stack, spanning both our core wildfire resilience platform and our utilities applications
• Work with large geospatial datasets — raster, vector, and tiled data — to surface forest planning, scenario building, and treatment outcome insights to end users
• Partner with Product and Design to scope, refine, and deliver user-facing workflows for land managers, foresters, and partner organizations
• Own features end-to-end, from technical design through deployment, monitoring, and iteration based on user feedback
• Contribute to platform reliability through code review, automated testing, observability, and on-call participation in our Sev process
• Collaborate with Environmental Analysis and Infrastructure teams to integrate geospatial models (Pyrologix, ForSys/Patchmax, canopy height) into the application experience
• Improve developer experience and engineering velocity through tooling, refactoring, and documentation
• Mentor and pair with other engineers, and participate in technical interviews as the team grows

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production web applications
• Proficiency in Elixir, including OTP
• Proficiency with relational databases (Postgres preferred) and SQL, including schema design, query optimization, and migrations
• Demonstrated ability to ship features end-to-end in a collaborative, cross-functional environment
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to scope ambiguous problems with PMs, designers, and domain experts
• Comfort working in a fully remote, fast-paced startup environment
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without visa sponsorship

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with Phoenix/LiveView

• Experience building geospatial or map-based applications, including working with interactive maps and spatial UI patterns
• Experience working with geospatial data (PostGIS, GDAL, GeoJSON, vector tiles, Mapbox/MapLibre, tippecanoe)

• Experience with AWS, Docker, and modern CI/CD workflows
• Background in climate tech, environmental science, GIS, forestry, or another mission-driven domain
• Prior work at an early- to mid-stage startup

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Salary Range: $100,000 – $200,000

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) plan
• Unlimited PTO policy
• Company equity
• Cell phone stipend (per pay period)
• Home office setup allowance (one-time)

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Vibrant Planet is committed to diversity. We encourage applicants from all cultures, races, colors, religions, sexes, national or regional origins, ages, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, military, or other status protected by law to apply. We are most interested in finding the best candidate for the job, and that candidate may come from a less traditional background, but have capacity to grow into and thrive in the position after some mentoring. We do not require that you have experience with every job description task. We will consider any equivalent combination of knowledge, skills, education, and experience to meet minimum qualifications. We encourage each candidate to think broadly about their unique background and skill set and how it may relate to the role. While we welcome applicants from all backgrounds, we regret that we are unable to provide visa sponsorship (including H-1B) at this time. Candidates must already be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for sponsorship.