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AEP HawaiiAEP Hawaii

Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Geospatial (Defense Tech)

Remote (US)Full-Time$150,000 – $215,000 / Annual+ Equity

Overview

  • Senior-to-Staff backend role building the backend systems that power geospatial capabilities across the platform.
  • AEP Hawaii is hiring on behalf of a profitable, venture-backed defense tech unicorn building agentic AI for national security and the Indo-Pacific mission.
  • This is a NON-CLEARED role. No active security clearance is required to apply or to start.
  • We are specifically looking for commercial software engineers from 0-to-1 startups (Seed through Series D). Prior defense or government experience is NOT required.

The Opportunity

  • Strong backend engineers with any level of geospatial exposure are encouraged to apply. You do not need to be a GIS specialist.
  • Bring commercial, startup-speed engineering into defense: small agile team, high ownership, and products used by real operators on the front lines.
  • Fast-growing, profitable company (roughly $3M to $80M ARR in three years) with a product-first, user-empathy engineering culture.

Responsibilities

  • Design and build scalable backend services and data pipelines for geospatial data.
  • Implement geospatial processing, indexing and query capabilities used by product teams.
  • Own systems end-to-end, from architecture through production operation.
  • Partner with product, frontend and mission teams to deliver user-facing capabilities.

Qualifications

  • Senior-to-Staff level backend engineering experience, ideally at a startup or high-growth commercial company.
  • Strong distributed systems, API design and relational database skills (e.g. Postgres).
  • Any geospatial experience (PostGIS, spatial indexing, mapping, imagery or location data).
  • Preferred: Python, AWS, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch geo queries.
  • Non-cleared: no clearance needed. Commercial startup background (Seed to Series D) strongly preferred over defense-only backgrounds.

Engagement Details

  • Compensation: $150,000 – $215,000 + equity.
  • Full-time, direct hire with the client. Remote (US).
  • Non-cleared: no active clearance required. U.S. Person status required (access to U.S.-only data systems).
  • Optional travel to meet users and mission teams.
  • Benefits include health/dental/vision, unlimited PTO, 401(k) match, WeWork access, wellbeing stipends, and fully paid parental leave.
  • Equal opportunity employer.