Senior Backend Engineer, Navigation & Spatial Systems

About BluJuniper

BluJuniper is an AI and optimization company building advanced software systems for complex operational environments. Our work spans cloud-native platforms, computer vision, natural language processing, data infrastructure, secure collaboration, and mission-focused AI/ML applications.

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to help build backend systems that support navigation, spatial workflows, and data modeling for complex 3D environments. This role combines backend engineering, schema design, event-driven systems, and spatially aware platform services.

Compensation

$125,000 - $225,000 per year

Compensation will be based on experience, location, and qualifications. BluJuniper offers competitive compensation and benefits for eligible employees.

About The Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design and implement services that support navigation-related capabilities while also helping define the data models, schemas, APIs, and event structures needed to represent complex spatial information. You will work across cloud services, data pipelines, authentication, and integration points across the broader platform.

This role is ideal for an engineer with strong experience in Go, C++, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language. Depending on the needs of the platform, this role may involve production development in Go or C++.

Responsibilities

· Design and develop backend services using Go, C++, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language.

· Build backend services that support navigation, spatial workflows, routing, and movement through or around complex 3D environments.

· Develop and maintain data schemas, domain models, event structures, persistence strategies, and data access patterns for spatial and platform data.

· Design service-to-service communication patterns, API contracts, event flows, and integration points between distributed services.

· Build backend infrastructure for authentication, authorization, role-based access control, and customer onboarding workflows.

· Build event-driven systems using Apache Kafka or comparable messaging technologies.

· Partner with product, frontend, AI/ML, DevOps, and security stakeholders to translate requirements into well-structured backend services.

· Work closely with computer vision, NLP, and AI/ML teams where backend services intersect with model-driven workflows.

· Improve system performance, scalability, reliability, and debuggability across production services.

· Participate in design reviews, code reviews, implementation planning, and production-readiness efforts.

Required Qualifications

· 5+ years of professional backend, systems, or navigation technology experience

· Strong proficiency in Go, C++, Java, Rust, or a similar object-oriented or lower-level programming language.

· Experience designing and operating cloud-based architectures on AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar cloud platforms.

· Strong understanding of microservice architecture, service boundaries, API design, inter-service communication, and distributed systems tradeoffs.

· Experience with data modeling, schema design, relational and/or non-relational databases, and long-term data maintainability.

· Experience with Apache Kafka, event-driven architectures, message queues, or stream-processing systems.

· Experience designing authentication and authorization systems, including role-based access control.

· Experience with navigation systems, spatial systems, routing, mapping, simulation, robotics, 3D environments, or related technical domains.

· Strong debugging and performance-analysis skills in production systems.

Preferred Qualifications

· Experience designing backend data models or schemas for complex technical systems.

· Experience building high-performance services or low-latency backend components.

· Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices.

· Familiarity with secure software development practices, audit logging, secrets management, and least-privilege access design.

· Experience working with computer vision, natural language processing, or AI/ML teams.

· Experience working in regulated, government, defense, or enterprise security environments.

· Experience with observability tooling, including structured logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, success means you can take complex spatial requirements and turn them into reliable backend systems. You can design practical data models, build clean service interfaces, and help the platform represent technical information in a way that is useful, maintainable, and scalable.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for someone who is technically strong, detail-oriented, and comfortable working in a complex domain. The ideal candidate can think about both algorithms and backend systems, and can help translate spatial concepts into durable software architecture.

Location

This is a hybrid role based in Washington, DC.

Employment Type

Full-time.

Work Authorization and Clearance Eligibility

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. An active U.S. government security clearance is not required for this role. Candidates who currently hold, have previously held, or may be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance are preferred. Certain customer, contract, or regulatory requirements may require additional eligibility verification.

Benefits

· Health, dental, and vision benefits for eligible employees.

· Flexible work environment.

· Opportunity to work on advanced computer vision, natural language processing, AI, optimization, and backend infrastructure problems.

· High-impact role with meaningful ownership over technical direction.

· Collaborative team environment with direct visibility into product and company strategy.

Equal Opportunity Statement

BluJuniper is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable law.