Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Telemetry (Defense Tech)

Overview

• Senior-to-Staff backend role building the systems that ingest, process and serve telemetry data.
• 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 telemetry experience are encouraged to apply: observability, IoT, sensor or high-volume event data all count.
• 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 high-throughput ingestion and processing pipelines for telemetry and time-series data.
• Build reliable storage and query layers that product teams and agents can use.
• Own systems end-to-end, from architecture through production operation and monitoring.
• Partner with product and mission teams to translate data needs into durable systems.

Qualifications

• Senior-to-Staff level backend engineering experience, ideally at a startup or high-growth commercial company.
• Strong distributed systems and data pipeline experience.
• Any telemetry experience: observability, IoT/sensors, streaming or time-series data.
• Preferred: Python, AWS, Kafka or similar streaming systems, time-series databases.
• 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.