Software Engineer - Backend

About the role

At Helsing we develop and deliver AI-based capabilities and the enabling infrastructure that allow semi-autonomous platforms to localise, navigate, and perceive the world in real time. We build software that is subject to significant and unorthodox technical constraints, must operate in a wide variety of constantly-changing environments, and has to support an ever-growing list of challenging use-cases. What we build ultimately ends up in the hands of real people in high-risk, high-stress situations, so must be both reliable and frictionless.

What you'll do

• Review code contributions, proposals, and RFCs from colleagues. At Helsing we strongly believe that unblocking others takes precedence over spending more time on your own work.
• Propose and implement new features, capabilities, algorithms, infrastructure, or even full products across our stack.
• Become a mentor, find a mentee, and help support and develop our interviewing pipeline.
• Share your experience and technical know-how with other Helsingers via tech talks, "let's learn together" groups, and topical office hours.
• Maintain our existing software stack (a mix of Rust and Python), including working with internal and external customers to identify issues and improving operational reliability and performance.
• Further develop our tests and benchmarks, both at the micro and macro level.
• Present your work at our weekly demo sessions.

What you'll need

• Can write legible, maintainable, and performant code.
• Communicate well in English, both verbally and in writing.
• Enjoy collaborating with others, including reviewing code and pair programming.
• Are comfortable working asynchronously (writing PRs and RFCs, having discussions by email).
• Have backend development experience, ideally with a language like Rust, Java, Go, or C++.
• Are familiar with backend interface tools like REST, GraphQL, gRPC/Protocol Buffers, and Arrow.
• Strive to improve yourself, your peers, and the culture you work in over time.

Nice to have

• Rust and Python specifically.
• Container-based and cloud-native application architectures (e.g., Docker, Azure, AWS).
• Metrics tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
• SQL and streaming database systems.
• Cryptographic protocols (e.g., Signal, WireGuard).
• Production ML systems.