Staff Software Engineer, Elixir

True Anomaly•Denver, CO

13d•$185,000 - $260,000•Onsite

About The Position

A new space race has begun. True Anomaly seeks those with the talent and ambition to build innovative technology that solves the next generation of engineering, manufacturing, and operational challenges for space security and sustainability. OUR MISSION The peaceful use of space is essential for continued prosperity on Earth—from communications and finance to navigation and logistics. True Anomaly builds innovative technology at the intersection of spacecraft, software, and AI to enhance the capabilities of the U.S., its allies, and commercial partners. We safeguard global security by ensuring space access and sustainability for all. OUR VALUES Be the offset. We create asymmetric advantages with creativity and ingenuity What would it take? We challenge assumptions to deliver ambitious results It’s the people. Our team is our competitive advantage and we are better together YOUR MISSION Software is the central nervous system for True Anomaly's engineering and product thesis. Software bridges the gap between military objectives, theoretical astrodynamics and the human and autonomous control of spacecraft and ground systems in time and space. True Anomaly is seeking an exceptional Staff Elixir Software Engineer to lead the technical direction and evolution of our distributed spacecraft ground control system. This is a high-impact, strategic leadership role. You'll define and drive the backend systems technical roadmap, lead cross-functional initiatives that span engineering, product, and operations, and establish the architectural foundations that will scale our distributed ground control platform for years to come. You'll identify strategic technical investments, champion them across the organization, and lead their execution. You won't just build features; you'll shape the product direction, influence company objectives, and mentor the engineers who will build the next generation of our platform. When you see systemic issues affecting reliability, velocity, or quality, you'll diagnose root causes, build consensus around solutions, and drive organizational change to address them. You do not need to have experience building space ground systems or experience in aerospace. You'll lead high-priority, greenfield initiatives with strategic importance to the company and a chance to fundamentally impact the outcome of future conflict (and the future of the company), all while enjoying world-class benefits including platinum healthcare, flexible work hours/location, highly competitive compensation and a generous stock options package.

Requirements

12+ years of software development experience
Expert-level mastery of Elixir and OTP, including deep understanding of BEAM internals, scheduling, memory management, garbage collection, process architecture, and runtime characteristics at scale
Deep expertise in designing, building, and evolving large-scale distributed systems, including architectural patterns for fault tolerance, consistency, availability, clustering, and horizontal scalability
Proven track record of establishing comprehensive testing strategies across unit, integration, property-based, and end-to-end layers, including championing testing culture and tooling adoption
Extensive experience designing, building, and evolving service architectures, libraries, and internal infrastructure that serve multiple teams and products
Expert-level understanding of distributed systems integration patterns including gRPC, REST, WebSockets, and GraphQL, with experience influencing API design and cross-service architecture decisions
Demonstrated ability to work full-stack when necessary, with enough frontend and infrastructure knowledge to make informed architectural decisions and unblock teams
History of leading technical initiatives in Git-based workflows, establishing code review standards, and fostering collaborative engineering culture
U.S. Citizen and eligible for DoD Secret or TS/SCI clearance

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or similar discipline
Proven experience as a technical lead, staff engineer, or principal engineer on production systems with significant user load and business-critical requirements
Deep mastery of OTP including BEAM scheduling, GenServers, run queues, pg, the Actor model, dynamic supervisors, registries, distributed process groups, and custom OTP behaviours, with experience pushing the boundaries of the runtime
Track record of leading large-scale migrations, architectural overhauls, or platform rewrites while maintaining product velocity and system reliability
Deep expertise building and optimizing complex, real-time distributed systems with demanding reliability and performance requirements (real-time telemetry processing, mission-critical command and control, large-scale data pipelines)
Advanced experience with database design and optimization at scale, including PostgreSQL internals, replication strategies, and data modeling for distributed systems
Extensive experience with monitoring, observability, and distributed tracing in production systems, including designing observability strategies and incident response frameworks
Experience in highly regulated industries (aerospace, defense, healthcare, finance) with understanding of compliance, security, and operational constraints
Published technical writing, open source contributions, or conference speaking that demonstrates thought leadership
Exceptional communication skills that enable you to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels of the organization

Responsibilities

Lead and deliver large-scale, cross-functional distributed systems initiatives that align with strategic company objectives, from technical vision through production deployment and long-term evolutio
Define and drive the Elixir/OTP systems roadmap and architectural strategy, establishing patterns, frameworks, and infrastructure that enable the entire engineering organization to move faste
Serve as the primary technical decision-maker for distributed systems architecture, evaluating and adopting new technologies, and establishing engineering standards that balance innovation with maintainabilit
Proactively identify systemic reliability risks, scalability challenges, and architectural limitations, then build business cases, secure buy-in, and lead multi-quarter initiatives to address the
Elevate the engineering organization through technical mentorship, establishing best practices, leading design reviews, and developing the skills of senior, mid-level, and junior engineer
Partner with executive leadership, product, design, frontend engineering, space operations, and astrodynamics teams as a key technical stakeholder, influencing product strategy and company directio
Drive engineering efficiency and excellence by establishing metrics, tooling, and processes that improve system reliability, deployment velocity, and developer experienc
Build and maintain technical documentation, architectural decision records, and knowledge-sharing systems that scale organizational learnin
Represent the distributed systems engineering perspective in strategic planning, resource allocation, and cross-company technical decision
Identify and develop emerging technical leaders within the team, creating growth pathways and opportunities for engineers to expand their impact