Sr Software Engineer I

Axon•Washington, DC

4h•Hybrid

About The Position

Join Axon and be a Force for Good. At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other. Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter. Your Impact Today, public safety officers spend up to 2/3 of their time on the job filling out paperwork (sometimes with paper, sometimes with floppy disks). Not only is this tedious for officers, but the never-ending pile of paperwork reduces the amount of time they can spend out in the field, protecting their communities. Axon Records cuts down on paperwork so that officers can spend more time prioritizing the safety of our communities. As a Senior Software Engineer on the 3P Search team, you will lead the design and evolution of the systems that connect Axon Records to external law enforcement databases and third-party partners. This team operates at critical system boundaries. We own secure, compliant integrations with NCIC and other state and federal databases, as well as partner-facing APIs that expose Axon Records data to CAD vendors and internal Axon systems. These systems must be correct, reliable, auditable, and resilient in the face of external dependencies. In this role, you will take ownership of complex backend systems that handle sensitive search workflows and partner integrations. You’ll translate regulatory, operational, and product requirements into well-architected solutions, ensuring that reliability and compliance are built in from the start - not retrofitted later. As a senior engineer, you are expected to raise the technical bar for the team—leading system design, anticipating failure modes, improving observability and operational rigor, and mentoring engineers as we scale Axon Records’ external search and integration capabilities.

Requirements

9+ years of professional software engineering experience
A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience)
Demonstrated experience owning full stack systems end-to-end in production environments
Experience designing and operating complex, cloud-based distributed systems in production
Strong system design skills, including the ability to reason clearly about reliability, consistency, compliance, and external integration tradeoffs
Experience creating and evolving APIs or services consumed by external partners or other engineering teams
Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous or high-risk system boundaries and drive clarity through technical leadership
Experience leading technical projects and coordinating work across teams
Strong collaboration and communication skills, working effectively across engineering, product, compliance, and partner teams

Nice To Haves

Experience building highly reliable, audit-heavy systems with strict correctness requirements
Experience integrating with enterprise third-party platforms
Experience improving operational tooling, observability, and incident response processes
Experience contributing across the full stack when needed

Responsibilities

Own the design and implementation of complex backend systems supporting NCIC search and third-party integrations
Design and evolve partner-facing Records APIs, including versioning strategies, data models, authentication, and contract stability
Lead system design discussions, clearly articulating tradeoffs across reliability, scalability, compliance, and maintainability
Anticipate and mitigate failure modes across distributed systems with external dependencies (timeouts, retries, idempotency, backpressure, etc.)
Improve observability, auditability, and operational tooling for search workflows and partner integrations
Contribute to and guide frontend implementations that support operational visibility and troubleshooting workflows
Coordinate technical work across engineers and partner teams to deliver cohesive, end-to-end integration solutions
Set and uphold a high technical standard through thorough code reviews, design reviews, and a focus on correctness and operational excellence
Participate in and improve on-call practices; lead incident reviews and drive systemic reliability improvements
Mentor engineers through technical guidance, pairing, and constructive feedback
Contribute to planning and execution of projects spanning multiple services, APIs, or integration surfaces