4 days ago
East Palo Alto, CA, USASenior
Base Salary
$145k - $175k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design and build APIs, SDKs, adapters, and integration tools for Fabric.
- Define interfaces for registering, discovering, querying, subscribing to, and replicating mission-critical data.
- Build integrations with autonomy services, command-and-control applications, operator interfaces, vehicle platforms, web applications, and partner software.
- Develop and maintain APIs using technologies such as gRPC, REST, Protocol Buffers, or comparable interface technologies.
- Establish patterns for schema evolution, versioning, compatibility, serialization, authentication, authorization, and error handling.
- Translate integration requirements into technical designs and production-ready implementations.
- Work with internal teams and external integrators to troubleshoot issues and improve developer experience.
- Build testable, observable, and maintainable services for distributed and intermittently connected environments.
- Create integration examples, reference implementations, automated test harnesses, and developer documentation.
- Improve workflows for local development, simulation, integration testing, deployment, and field support.
- Contribute to platform architecture, roadmap, technical strategy, design reviews, and integration patterns.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- At least 4 years of professional software engineering experience building production software.
- Strong experience designing and implementing APIs, integrations, backend services, or developer platforms.
- Proficiency in one or more of C++, Rust, Go, Python, Java, Kotlin, or TypeScript.
- Experience with gRPC, REST, GraphQL, Protocol Buffers, or similar interface technologies.
- Understanding of distributed-systems fundamentals including communication, replication, consistency, failure handling, concurrency, and recovery.
- Experience with data models, serialization formats, schema evolution, and backward compatibility.
- Strong unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end testing fundamentals.
- Experience developing and debugging software in Linux-based environments.
- Ability to work directly with partner teams or customers and deliver practical solutions.
- Proven ability to take technical projects from concept through production.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Preferred experience with SDKs, plugins, adapters, middleware, or developer-facing platforms.
- Preferred experience integrating robotics, autonomy, command-and-control, defense, automotive, or other edge systems.
- Preferred familiarity with DDS, ZeroMQ, MQTT, NATS, Kafka, or custom transports.
- Preferred networking experience with UDP, TCP, unicast, multicast, routing, and constrained or unreliable links.
- Preferred experience with disconnected or intermittently connected environments, distributed authentication and authorization, cloud and edge deployment, containers, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, observability, and build or package-management systems.
- Preferred familiarity with CMake, Conan, Bazel, Cargo, or comparable tools.
- Preferred experience with geospatial, telemetry, sensor, or mission data and supporting external developers or integrators.
- Active security clearance or ability to obtain one may be required.
Benefits
- Base salary ranges from $145,000-$165,000 in Arlington, VA and $155,000-$175,000 in Palo Alto, CA.
- Equity is included in most full-time, high-demand roles.
- Full-time employees receive three premium healthcare plan options, with Forterra covering 80% of premiums for employees and dependents.
- Forterra covers basic life/AD&D and short- and long-term disability insurance plans.
- Benefits include a generous holiday calendar, 20 accrued PTO days per year, and at least seven weeks of fully paid parental leave.
- Employees receive a $9,000 annual tuition reimbursement or professional development stipend.
- Benefits include a 401(k) plan with traditional, Roth, and after-tax deferral options and company matching up to 4%.
- The position is based in Arlington, Virginia or Palo Alto, California; security-clearance eligibility may be required.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Forterra
Forterra builds autonomous mission systems for defense and industrial ground operations, including self-driving kits for land vehicles and coordinated robotic swarms. It develops mission-critical hardware and software for autonomy in GPS-denied and contested environments, supporting military logistics, convoying, and yard/drayage use cases. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Clarksburg, Maryland, the privately held company serves U.S. and allied government programs alongside commercial fleet operators.