Senior Software Engineer - FlightAware Flight Tracking (Onsite)

RTX•Houston, TX

1d•Onsite

About The Position

FlightAware is seeking a software engineer passionate about aviation and distributed systems to join its core flight tracking crew. This backend-focused role involves working on critical flight tracking systems to ensure the highest quality and most accurate flight and surface tracking data in the industry. The data produced by this team underpins nearly every FlightAware product, ensuring high impact across the entire product suite. As a member of the team, the engineer will build scalable, fault-tolerant software systems and solve challenging problems. FlightAware has developed the world's leading aviation software platform, processing over 180+ million incoming messages an hour from over 34,000 individual data feeds, totaling 5 terabytes a day and growing. The company provides the best, most complete, and most accurate real-time flight-tracking service, building successful products that are central to the aviation industry. FlightAware values excellent interpersonal and communication skills, seeking candidates who demonstrate clear communication, embrace open feedback, trust colleagues, and are driven to execute, deliver, and complete projects independently and efficiently.

Requirements

Typically requires a degree in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) and minimum 5 years prior relevant experience or an Advanced Degree in a related field and minimum 3 years of experience
Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without sponsorship now or in the future. RTX will not offer sponsorship for this position.
Professional experience building backend systems as a software engineer using languages and technologies such as Rust, Go, Python, Kubernetes, Kafka, PostgreSQL, or similar; containerization & orchestration with Docker; strong practical knowledge of the Linux command line.

Nice To Haves

Experience writing well-documented and highly tested code.
Experience working with distributed systems or real-time APIs with demanding reliability and SLA requirements.
Experience with queueing frameworks (RabbitMQ, Kafka, etc.).
Passionate about general developer tooling and productivity.
Experience with Nix for build and dependency management.
Knowledge of cloud native tools like Flux, Open Telemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Terraform, or similar.
Knowledge of cybersecurity best practices and secure software design.
A track record of acquiring new skills, proactively solving problems, applying new technology in the workplace and openness to new approaches.
Excited about improving the world’s foremost flight tracking and aviation platform.
You are a private pilot, or you are looking to pursue your private pilot license.

Responsibilities

Write high-quality, well-tested code for our systems to meet the needs of our customers—some of the largest airlines and airports in the world, along with those in countless other industries.
Help articulate and deliver a long-term vision for maintaining and scaling our backend systems and the teams running them.
Maintain and improve the company’s core flight tracking systems.
Build new services to support new products, and revolutionize existing ones, using Rust & Python.
Work with other engineers, product owners, and senior leadership to transform our product and technical vision into a tangible roadmap every quarter.
Interact with customers in the industry to understand how our systems can better serve them.
Dig deep into our data fusion and interpretation algorithms to improve matching and information synthesis of live position and flightplan feeds.
Detect data quality issues, identify their root causes, develop fixes, and design auditing to prevent future issues.
Design, build, and maintain ETL pipelines to support data and analytical needs.
Help design new distributed systems from scratch and bring them to production.

Benefits

Medical insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Three weeks of vacation for newly hired employees
Generous 401(k) plan that includes employer matching funds and separate employer retirement contribution, including a Lifetime Income Strategy option
Tuition reimbursement program
Student Loan Repayment Program
Life insurance
Disability coverage
Optional coverages you can buy pet insurance, home and auto insurance, additional life and accident insurance, critical illness insurance, group legal, ID theft protection
Birth, adoption, parental leave benefits
Ovia Health, fertility, and family planning
Adoption Assistance
Autism Benefit
Employee Assistance Plan, including up to 10 free counseling sessions
Healthy You Incentives, wellness rewards program
Doctor on Demand, virtual doctor visits
Bright Horizons, child and elder care services
Teladoc Medical Experts, second opinion program
Flexible spending accounts
Flexible work schedules
Paid time off
Paid holidays
Annual short-term and/or long-term incentive compensation programs