Senior Backend Engineer

"The United States Air National Guard’s 131st Rescue Squadron recently relied on Somewear’s unique ATAK integration to coordinate a civilian rescue 1,200 miles off the U.S. Pacific coast. Because our platform provided consistent comms and situational awareness across air, ground, and medical teams, the mission wrapped up in half the expected time — and lives were saved."

At Somewear Labs, that’s the kind of impact our technology delivers. Our satellite-powered platform keeps people in touch, informed, and safe anywhere in the world — whether they’re helicopter paramedics, backcountry explorers, wildland firefighters, or U.S. Department of Defense operators.

We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our small but mighty team and help shape the future of mission-critical communications. This is not just another backend role — you’ll be solving problems where every millisecond of latency and every dropped packet matters.

Why this role matters

At a Series A stage, you won’t be a cog in the machine — you’ll own entire projects, make architectural decisions that define our platform for years to come, and directly see your work powering life-saving missions in the field.

What you’ll do

• Design, build, and scale backend services in Kotlin, Spring, Postgres, Redis, gRPC
• Power real-time data exchange for satellite and mesh-networked hardware
• Solve tough challenges around bandwidth-constrained, security-critical systems
• Architect and deliver integrations with partner platforms (government and commercial)
• Manage and evolve our AWS/GCP cloud infrastructure
• Partner closely with frontend engineers and designers to ship intuitive APIs and user experiences
• Set and raise the bar for engineering standards, tools, and processes

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
• 2+ years of backend web application development (JVM preferred)
• Hands-on experience running production systems in AWS or GCP
• Strong systems thinker: balancing scalability, security, and reliability under real-world constraints
• Passionate about building for users whose safety depends on your work
• Excited to wear multiple hats in a lean startup — from infrastructure to APIs
• Ownership mindset: you bring ideas from concept to production and take pride in results

What You’ll Love About Somewear

• Mission with impact: your work directly contributes to saving lives
• Full ownership: end-to-end responsibility for projects, not just tickets
• Growth environment: exposure across the stack, from custom hardware to cloud services
• Direct impact: access to senior leadership and the ability to shape engineering culture
• An ambitious, motivated team that’s serious about impact and enjoys working together

Work from our San Francisco HQ or Chicago office. Please apply only if you meet this requirement.

Ready to build technology that saves lives? Apply now and join us in shaping the future of mission-critical communications.