Senior Software Engineer, Platform Integration at Forterra in Arlington, VA; East Palo Alto, CA

Job description

• About the role
• Fabric is Forterra's distributed systems platform for registering, discovering, and replicating mission-critical data across dynamic mesh network topologies. Fabric enables interoperability between autonomous vehicles, operators, services, and partner systems across unreliable, bandwidth-constrained networks.
• Fabric is foundational infrastructure used by multiple internal teams and external integrators. It connects autonomy systems, command-and-control applications, operator interfaces, vehicles, and partner technologies into a common operational ecosystem.
• We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to focus on Fabric integrations and developer-facing APIs. You will help make Fabric easier to adopt across Forterra's products and by external partners, building the interfaces, adapters, SDKs, tools, and documentation that connect Fabric to real-world systems.
• This role is ideal for a generalist engineer who enjoys working across system boundaries. You will partner directly with teams building autonomy, command and control, networking, web applications, and vehicle software to understand their needs and deliver reliable integrations. You should be comfortable moving between API design, backend services, data modeling, distributed systems, testing, deployment, and technical documentation.
• This is a hands-on role with significant ownership and cross-team influence. You will help shape how developers and integrators interact with Fabric while contributing to the evolution of the platform itself.

Responsibilities

• Design and build APIs, SDKs, adapters, and integration tools that enable applications and partner systems to use Fabric.
• Define clear interfaces for registering, discovering, querying, subscribing to, and replicating mission-critical data.
• Build integrations between Fabric and systems such as autonomy services, command-and-control applications, operator interfaces, vehicle platforms, web applications, and external 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 real-world integration requirements into practical technical designs and production-ready implementations.
• Work directly with internal teams and external integrators to troubleshoot issues, close capability gaps, and improve the developer experience.
• Build testable, observable, and maintainable services that operate across distributed and intermittently connected environments.
• Create integration examples, reference implementations, automated test harnesses, and developer documentation.
• Improve tooling and workflows for local development, simulation, integration testing, deployment, and field support.
• Collaborate with platform, autonomy, networking, TerraLink, ATAK, web, and product teams to establish consistent integration patterns.
• Contribute to Fabric's technical roadmap, architecture, and long-term platform strategy.
• Participate in design reviews and communicate technical decisions clearly to both engineering and integration audiences.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 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 modern programming languages such as C++, Rust, Go, Python, Java, Kotlin, or TypeScript.
• Experience with API and interface technologies such as gRPC, REST, GraphQL, Protocol Buffers, or similar.
• Understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including service communication, replication, consistency, failure handling, concurrency, and recovery.
• Experience working with data models, serialization formats, schema evolution, and backward compatibility.
• Strong testing fundamentals, including unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end testing.
• Experience developing and debugging software in Linux-based environments.
• Ability to work directly with partner teams or customers to understand requirements and deliver practical solutions.
• Proven ability to take technical projects from concept through production.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex systems clearly.
• Experience building SDKs, plugins, adapters, middleware, or developer-facing platforms.
• Experience integrating with robotics, autonomy, command-and-control, defense, automotive, or other edge systems.
• Familiarity with publish/subscribe or message-oriented middleware such as DDS, ZeroMQ, MQTT, NATS, Kafka, or custom transports.
• Networking experience, including UDP, TCP, unicast, multicast, routing, or operation over constrained and unreliable links.
• Experience building software that operates across disconnected, intermittently connected, or bandwidth constrained environments.
• Familiarity with authentication and authorization models for distributed systems.
• Experience with cloud and edge deployment technologies, containers, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Experience with observability tools for logging, metrics, tracing, and distributed-system diagnostics.
• Familiarity with CMake, Conan, Bazel, Cargo, or comparable build and package-management systems.
• Experience working with geospatial, telemetry, sensor, or mission data.
• Experience supporting external developers or integrators through technical documentation, examples, and hands-on troubleshooting.
• Active security clearance or ability to obtain one.

Skills

Required

• C++
• Rust
• Go
• Python
• Java
• Kotlin
• TypeScript
• gRPC
• REST
• GraphQL
• Protocol Buffers
• DDS

Benefits

• $145,000 - $165,000 (Arlington, VA)
• $155,000 - $175,000 (Palo Alto, CA)
• The salary range for this role is an estimate and is based on a wide variety of compensation factors. The salary offered to candidates will vary based on a variety of factors including (but not limited to) relevant work experience, education, specialized training, critical expertise, training, and more. Equity in Forterra is included in most of our full-time, high-demand roles and is therefore considered part of Forterra’s overall compensation package. In addition to base salary and equity, Forterra offers competitive benefits for full-time employees including:
• Premium Healthcare Benefits: Three plan options, including an HSA-eligible plan, with Forterra covering 80% of the plan premium for you and your dependents.
• Basic Life/AD&D, short and long-term disability insurance plans 100% covered by Forterra, plus the option to purchase additional life insurance for you and your dependents.
• Extremely generous company holiday calendar including a winter break in December.
• Competitive paid time off (PTO) offering 20 days accrued per year.
• A minimum of 7 weeks fully paid parental leave for birth/adoption.
• A $9k annual tuition reimbursement or professional development stipend.
• Fully stocked beverage refrigerators with all the Celsius your little heart desires.
• 401(k) retirement savings plan, including traditional, Roth 401(k), and after-tax deferral with company match up to 4%.
• Your recruiter will be able to share more information about our salary and benefits offering during the hiring process.