Senior Software Engineer

Vannevar builds AI systems for the Department of War's most consequential missions. We have 125 deployments across every branch and combatant command spanning our core platform and five distinct products. An an example of how we work, when major combat operations started with Iran, we fielded a new product supporting 24/7 operations and 9,000+ users in three months.

How we build is our advantage: we deploy forward with the people who own the mission. Our engineers, product team, and CTO deploy forward to the point of friction, including visiting units in Ukraine. We focus on embedding directly with operational units supporting great power competition with China, combat operations with Iran, and counter-narcotics missions.

About the role

Vannevar is seeking an experienced full-stack engineer to advance the design and implementation of our Decision Advantage product. This critical platform enables defense and intelligence operators to gain comprehensive situational awareness of the information environment, helping them understand and counter adversary influence operations and information warfare tactics. You will build the applications our warfighters and intelligence analysts use daily for mission-critical work, developing advanced products and features for information distillation, analysis, and visualization that enable rapid assessment of the information environment. Working alongside designers, engineers, subject matter experts, and operational users, you will transform complex intelligence requirements into intuitive, mission-ready workflows that directly support national security objectives.

In this role, you will work in a small cross-functional team focused on delivering Decision Advantage capabilities to defense customers engaged in strategic competition with near-peer adversaries. You will work on all aspects of the product - everything from data (extraction, ingestion), backend (storage, indexing, APIs), frontend, AI analysis (agents), and more. The platform has a strong foundation to build upon and there is a ton of opportunity to make an impact as we take it to the next level.

Note: this role is also open to staff+ candidates.

What you’ll do

• Build mission-ready applications. Develop intuitive interfaces that help operators and analysts explore, understand, and assess the information environment.
• Own problems end to end. Work across data ingestion, backend services, search, frontend applications, and infrastructure to deliver complete capabilities.
• Solve challenging data problems. Build reliable systems that collect, index, query, and synthesize high-scale unstructured and semi-structured data.
• Integrate AI into operational workflows. Develop agentic analysis capabilities that help users distill information and identify insights.
• Work directly with users. Partner with mission owners, designers, and operational users to understand workflows, iterate on solutions, and shape the product.

What we look for

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping and owning production software.
• Strong full-stack skills, including experience building modern web applications and backend services. Our stack includes TypeScript, React, Node.js, PostgreSQL, and AWS, but experience with every technology isn’t required.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to design, build, and operate reliable, performant systems.
• Strong product intuition and curiosity about users and their problems. You care about building the right thing, not just implementing requirements.
• A high degree of ownership, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to drive work from problem definition through deployment.

Nice to have

• Active security clearance or ability to obtain one and desire to travel to visit users, collect feedback, and debug issues
• Experience building AI-native products or integrating agentic workflows into production applications.
• Experience working directly with customers or operational users.

What we offer

We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Remote friendly with WeWork access
• Unlimited PTO, shared downtime during the federal holiday calendar, and company-wide off time at the end of each year
• 401(k) match
• Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends
• Salary top-up during military reserve duty
• Fully paid parental leave
• Child and pet care reimbursement during travel

Vannevar is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you!

IMPORTANT NOTICE
We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.