Backend Software Engineer, Weather & Aviation
Summary
Senior backend engineer at Spire who builds and scales AWS-based services delivering weather and aviation data (REST APIs, streaming feeds) with OIDC/OAuth auth, observability, and on-call ownership under NIST/ISO 27001 compliance. Hybrid role in Boulder with at least three office days per week.
The Role:
Spire's Weather & Aviation business delivers global weather forecasts, flight tracking, and aviation data to customers who rely on it every day to make operational decisions. As we grow, we're investing in the engineering foundations that keep our platform fast, secure, and dependable at scale.
We're seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer who has helped production systems scale, harden, and stay reliable as usage and expectations grew. You'll own critical services end to end, contribute to the architecture behind our weather and aviation data services, and help raise the engineering bar as we grow. This role suits someone with experience in an established organization with production customers, uptime commitments, and compliance obligations, where a well-designed, observable, recoverable system matters more than the fastest prototype.
What You'll Do as a Senior Backend Software Engineer:
- Build and improve AWS-based backend services with a focus on availability, fault tolerance, and performance as load grows
- Design and implement authentication and authorization features using OIDC and OAuth 2.0, including token handling, service-to-service auth, and access control
- Develop and maintain the REST APIs and streaming endpoints (e.g., WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, or Kinesis/Kafka-backed feeds) that deliver Spire's weather and aviation data to customers
- Improve observability across metrics, logging, and tracing, and help define and track SLOs for the services you own
- Share ownership of production operations, including participation in an on-call rotation, incident response, and postmortems, as part of an engineering team that runs what it builds
- Apply secure engineering practices day to day, and help our systems meet the NIST and ISO/IEC 27001 standards we operate under
- Take the technical lead on projects within your area, from design through rollout
- Mentor other engineers through code reviews, pairing, and design discussions
- Contribute to team practices for testing, deployment, infrastructure-as-code, and change management
- Collaborate closely with product owners and data scientists to align backend services with customer and mission needs
- Create and maintain clear documentation for APIs and system architectures
Basic Skills/Qualifications:
- 6+ years' experience in professional backend software development, with significant time operating and scaling production systems that customers rely on
- A track record of taking systems from "working" to "reliable": improving uptime, reducing incidents, and handling growth in data volume, traffic, or customers
- Strong hands-on experience with AWS (e.g., ECS/EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, S3, IAM, VPC networking) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CDK, or CloudFormation)
- Strong knowledge of OIDC and OAuth 2.0, including identity providers (e.g., Cognito, Okta, Auth0, Keycloak), JWT handling, and secure session and token management
- Experience designing and operating both REST APIs and streaming or real-time data endpoints
- Experience working in environments governed by NIST or ISO/IEC 27001 security standards, with an understanding of how they shape engineering decisions
- Proficiency in Python or another backend language such as Go, Java, or TypeScript/Node.js
- Excellent documentation, collaboration, and communication skills, and comfort making and defending architectural trade-offs
Nice to Have:
- Experience with the Pangeo ecosystem (xarray, Dask, Zarr, Jupyter) or other large-scale scientific and geospatial data tooling
- Background in the weather or aviation domains, including familiarity with data formats such as GRIB2 and NetCDF, aviation products such as METAR/TAF or ADS-B, or regulatory contexts such as the FAA
Spire operates a hybrid work model, and this position will require you to work a minimum of three days per week in the office.
Access to US export-controlled software and/or technology may be required for this role. If needed, Spire will arrange the necessary licenses—this is not something candidates need to have before applying. #LI-MK1
The anticipated base salary range for this position is listed below. Final base salary for this role will be based on the location, skills, experience and qualifications. In addition to base compensation, this role is eligible for commissions and annual equity awards. This role is also eligible for our employee benefits program, including vacation, sick, and personal time off; optional medical, dental, vision, life, and disability coverage; a 401(K) plan; health and wellness reimbursement program; and participation in Spire’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
Global Perks
🛰️ Name Your Satellite Program (NYSP)
🚀 Launch Attendance
🌴 Generous Time Off Policy
🎓 Education Assistance Program
🥰 Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
📈 Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
👣 Family Leave
💪 Fitness Reimbursement
🧡 Employee Referral Program
🍉 Healthy snacks & beverages in every office
About Spire
We improve life on Earth with data from space.
Spire Global is a space-to-cloud analytics company that owns and operates the largest multi-purpose constellation of satellites. Its proprietary data and algorithms provide the most advanced maritime, aviation, and weather tracking in the world. In addition to its constellation, Spire’s data infrastructure includes a global ground station network and 24/7 operations that provide real-time global coverage of every point on Earth.
Spire is Global and our success draws upon the diverse viewpoints, skills and experiences of our employees. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status.
To help maintain a safe and secure workplace for Spire employees, all candidates who receive a conditional offer will be required to complete a background check. This may include criminal history and employment verification.
Please take a moment to review Spire's Global Data Privacy Notice for Employees, Contractors, Candidates and Visitors, as well as Spire's Privacy Policy.
Kindly be advised that communication regarding your application may come from @spire.com, @recruiting.spire.com, or from Candidate.fyi (our scheduling tool).
Skills
As published by greenhouse · 15 questions
Basics
First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone, Resume/CV, Cover Letter, Location
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- Given the option, do you lean more toward Team Dell or Team Mac for your work setup?
- Spire operates in a hybrid capacity and this role requires you to be onsite in the office advertised 3x per week. Are you able to meet this requirement?
- If you are not currently located near a Spire office, are you open to relocation for this position in the immediate future?
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