Senior Backend Engineer, Navigation & Spatial Systems

Job Description

Job Description

Title: Senior Backend Engineer, Navigation & Spatial Systems

Location: Washington, DC - Onsite

We have another role that has opened. Same deal as it is the same client.

About the RoleAs a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design and implement services that support navigation related capabilities while also helping define the data models, schemas, APIs, and event structures needed to represent complex spatial information. You will work across cloud services, data pipelines, authentication, and integration points across the broader platform.
This role is ideal for an engineer with strong experience in C , or a similar object oriented or lower-level programming language. Depending on the needs of the platform, this role may involve production development in Go or C .Responsibilities

• Design and develop backend services using C , or a similar object oriented or lower level programming language.
• Build backend services that support navigation, spatial workflows, routing, and movement through or around complex 3D environments.
• Develop and maintain data schemas, domain models, event structures, persistence strategies, and data access patterns for spatial and platform data.
• Design service to service communication patterns, API contracts, event flows, and integration points between distributed services.
• Build backend infrastructure for authentication, authorization, role based access control, and customer onboarding workflows.
• Build event driven systems using Apache Kafka or comparable messaging technologies.
• Partner with product, frontend, AI/ML, DevOps, and security stakeholders to translate requirements into well structured backend services.
• Work closely with computer vision, NLP, and AI/ML teams where backend services intersect with model driven workflows.
• Improve system performance, scalability, reliability, and debuggability across production services.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, implementation planning, and production readiness efforts.

Required Qualifications

• 5 years of professional backend, systems, or navigation technology experience.
• Strong proficiency in C , Java, Rust, or a similar object oriented or lower level programming language.
• Experience designing and operating cloud based architectures on AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar cloud platforms.
• Strong understanding of microservice architecture, service boundaries, API design, inter service communication, and distributed systems tradeoffs.
• Experience with data modeling, schema design, relational and/or non relational databases, and long term data maintainability.
• Experience with Apache Kafka, event driven architectures, message queues, or stream processing systems.
• Experience designing authentication and authorization systems, including role based access control.
• Experience with navigation systems, spatial systems, routing, mapping, simulation, robotics, 3D environments, or related technical domains.
• Strong debugging and performance analysis skills in production systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing backend data models or schemas for complex technical systems.
• Experience building high performance services or low latency backend components.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices.
• Familiarity with secure software development practices, audit logging, secrets management, and least privilege access design.
• Experience working with computer vision, natural language processing, or AI/ML teams.