Staff Software Engineer

YOUR MISSION

Software is the central nervous system for True Anomaly's engineering and product thesis. Software bridges the gap between military objectives, theoretical astrodynamics and the human and autonomous control of spacecraft and ground systems in time and space. True Anomaly is seeking an exceptional Staff Full Stack Software Engineer to lead the technical direction and evolution of our spacecraft modeling, simulation, and distributed ground control platform across the entire stack.

This is a high-impact, strategic leadership role. You'll define and drive the technical roadmap spanning frontend and backend systems, lead cross-functional initiatives that bridge engineering, product, and operations, and establish the architectural foundations that will scale our platform for years to come. You'll identify strategic technical investments, champion them across the organization, and lead their execution. You won't just build features; you'll shape the product direction, influence company objectives, and mentor the engineers who will build the next generation of our platform. When you see systemic issues affecting velocity, reliability, or quality across the stack, you'll diagnose root causes, build consensus around solutions, and drive organizational change to address them.

You do not need to have experience building space ground systems or experience in aerospace. You'll lead high-priority, greenfield initiatives with strategic importance to the company and a chance to fundamentally impact the outcome of future conflict (and the future of the company), all while enjoying world-class benefits including platinum healthcare, flexible work hours/location, highly competitive compensation and a generous stock options package. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead and deliver large-scale, cross-functional initiatives that span the entire stack, aligning frontend experience, backend infrastructure, and system architecture with strategic company objectives, from technical vision through production deployment and long-term evolution
• Define and drive the full-stack technical roadmap and architectural strategy, establishing patterns, frameworks, and systems that enable the entire engineering organization to move faster across both React/TypeScript and Elixir codebases
• Serve as the primary technical decision-maker for cross-stack architecture, evaluating and adopting new technologies, defining the boundaries and contracts between frontend and backend systems, and establishing engineering standards that balance innovation with maintainability
• Proactively identify systemic technical debt, scalability challenges, and architectural limitations across the stack, then build business cases, secure buy-in, and lead multi-quarter initiatives to address them
• Elevate the engineering organization through technical mentorship, establishing best practices, leading design reviews, and developing the skills of senior, mid-level, and junior engineers across both frontend and backend disciplines
• Partner with executive leadership, product, design, space operations, and astrodynamics teams as a key technical stakeholder, influencing product strategy and company direction with a perspective that encompasses the entire technical surface
• Drive engineering efficiency and excellence by establishing metrics, tooling, and processes that improve code quality, system reliability, deployment velocity, and developer experience across the stack
• Build and maintain technical documentation, architectural decision records, and knowledge-sharing systems that scale organizational learning
• Represent the full-stack engineering perspective in strategic planning, resource allocation, and cross-company technical decisions Identify and develop emerging technical leaders within the team, creating growth pathways and opportunities for engineers to expand their impact across the stack 

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE IN THIS ROLE

• You recognize that the team is repeatedly solving similar problems differently across the frontend and backend; you design and champion unified patterns, drive their adoption across teams, and measure their impact on velocity and reliability
• You identify a fundamental mismatch between the frontend data model and the backend service architecture before it becomes a scaling crisis; you build a compelling case with data, present it to leadership, secure a quarter of engineering time, and lead a coordinated migration across both layers
• You're involved in early product strategy discussions, not just implementation; you're shaping what we build by contributing technical insights about feasibility, risk, and opportunity that account for the full system
• A critical production issue arises that spans the frontend and backend; you quickly establish incident command, coordinate the response across teams and layers, drive it to resolution, and lead the post-mortem that prevents recurrence 
• You see a pattern of frontend and backend engineers making architectural decisions in isolation from each other; you establish a lightweight cross-stack review process that improves decisions while respecting team autonomy
• You're asked about the 6-month technical roadmap and can articulate not just what's being built across the stack, but why it matters, what success looks like, what the risks are, and what alternatives were considered Junior and mid-level engineers come to you not because they're stuck on a problem, but because they want to validate their architectural thinking; and you help them grow as technical decision-makers who think beyond their layer of the stack
• You notice the team is spending significant time on a class of integration bugs between the frontend and backend; you trace it to a root architectural cause, propose a fundamental rework of the contract between layers, and lead its implementation You disagree with a strategic product or technical decision being made at the executive level; you present a well-researched alternative with clear tradeoffs and business impact, influencing the final direction 

QUALIFICATIONS

• 12+ years of software development experience, with demonstrated expertise across both frontend and backend development
• Expert-level mastery of HTML/CSS and modern TypeScript/JavaScript, including deep understanding of performance optimization, browser internals, memory management, and runtime characteristics
• Deep expertise in modern React and the broader frontend ecosystem, including architectural patterns for large-scale applications, advanced state management, performance profiling and optimization, and emerging frontend technologies
• Expert-level mastery of Elixir and OTP, including deep understanding of BEAM internals, scheduling, memory management, garbage collection, process architecture, and runtime characteristics at scale
• Deep expertise in designing, building, and evolving large-scale distributed systems, including architectural patterns for fault tolerance, consistency, availability, clustering, and horizontal scalability
• Proven track record of establishing comprehensive testing strategies across the full stack, including unit, integration, property-based, and end-to-end, including championing testing culture and tooling adoption 
• Extensive experience designing, building, and evolving component libraries, design systems, service architectures, and internal infrastructure that serve multiple teams and products
• Expert-level understanding of distributed systems integration patterns including gRPC, REST, WebSockets, and GraphQL, with experience defining API contracts and influencing architecture decisions across the stack
• History of leading technical initiatives in Git-based workflows, establishing code review standards, and fostering collaborative engineering culture
• U.S. Citizen and eligible for DoD Secret or TS/SCI clearance

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or similar discipline
• Proven experience as a technical lead, staff engineer, or principal engineer on production systems with significant user bases and business-critical requirements, with responsibility spanning multiple layers of the stack 
• Track record of leading large-scale migrations, architectural overhauls, or platform rewrites across frontend and backend systems while maintaining product velocity and system reliability
• Deep expertise building and optimizing complex, data-intensive applications with demanding performance requirements (real-time processing, large-scale datasets, complex visualizations, distributed systems) across the full stack Advanced proficiency with Three.js, React Three Fiber, WebGL, or other web-based 3D rendering technologies, including low-level performance optimization and shader programming
• Deep mastery of OTP including BEAM scheduling, GenServers, run queues, pg, the Actor model, dynamic supervisors, registries, distributed process groups, and custom OTP behaviours, with experience pushing the boundaries of the runtime
• Advanced experience with database design and optimization at scale, including PostgreSQL internals, replication strategies, and data modeling for distributed systems Extensive experience with monitoring, observability, and distributed tracing across the full stack, including designing observability strategies and incident response frameworks
• Experience bridging engineering and design through deep UI/UX collaboration, design systems development, and tools like Figma, able to influence design decisions with technical constraints and possibilities
• Experience in highly regulated industries (aerospace, defense, healthcare, finance) with understanding of compliance, security, and operational constraints
• Published technical writing, open source contributions, or conference speaking that demonstrates thought leadership
• Exceptional communication skills that enable you to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels of the organization

COMPENSATION

• Base Salary: $205,000 - $315,000
• Equity + Benefits including Health, Dental, Vision, HRA/HSA options, PTO and paid holidays, 401K, Parental Leave

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, location, and experience.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Work Location—This is an onsite role, we are seeking candidates based near Denver, CO or Long Beach, CA. 
• Work environment—the work environment; temperature, noise level, inside or outside, or other factors that will affect the person's working conditions while performing the job.
• Physical demands—the physical demands of the job, including bending, sitting, lifting and driving.

This position will be open until it is successfully filled. To submit your application, please follow the directions below.
#LI-Onsite