Modernization Engineer

Spear AI is seeking an experienced Software Engineer to lead the design, development, and modernization of the combat systems for US Nuclear Submarines. This role combines cutting-edge technology innovation with mission-critical engineering to bring new operational capabilities while ensuring seamless integration with existing systems.

The ideal candidate has worked in large legacy systems and has a passion for modernizing code. They enjoy working in small teams in disconnected environments. They MUST have an affinity for working with new/improved technologies and not be resistant to change.

Candidates with a GitHub (or other open-source) profile stand out because we can check their work for:

- Attention to detail

- Code quality

- Experimentation with new technologies

The candidate must be willing to obtain a US government Secret security clearance. Once a Secret clearance has been obtained, the candidate has the option of requesting a Top Secret clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). For information on obtaining a Secret security clearance please see this link. Preference will be given for candidates already possessing a Secret security clearance. While some activities for this job will be performed on site, we expect most of the work to be performed at a home office that can meet heightened security requirements.

Programming (Essential)

• Proficiency in low-level languages like C/C++ (Rust and Zig is an awesome plus)

• Proficiency in high-level languages like Python / mypy (TypeScript is a plus)

• Data structures and algorithms

• Design patterns

• Functional programming

• Object-oriented programming

• Complexity analysis (Big O notation)

• Memory safety and thread safety

• Expert at debugging (race conditions, deadlocks, etc.)

Testing (Essential)

• Code quality

• Type checking

• Linting and formatting (Clang, Ruff, etc.)

• Assertions

• Unit and property-based testing

• Code coverage

• Integration testing

• End-to-end testing

• Profiling (metrics, tracing, etc.)

• Benchmarking

• Load and stress testing

Engineering (Essential)

• Version control (Monorepos)

• Documentation (README, comments, Architecture Decision Records)

• CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, etc.)

• Experience reviewing pull requests (providing and receiving feedback)

• Package management (Cargo, PyPI) - Semantic versioning

• Build systems (CMake, Meson, etc.)

• Artifact management (Cargo, PyPI, NPM)

• Containerization (Docker / Docker Compose)

• Cloud providers (AWS - Preferred, Bonus for Azure and GCP)

Large Language Model (Preferred)

• Experience hosting LLM inference servers

• Familiar with major LLM frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.)

• Experience with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

• Knowledge of vector databases and similarity search

• Text embedding models and techniques

• Prompt engineering and chain-of-thought reasoning

• Token optimization and context window management

• Model quantization and optimization

System Level (Preferred)

• Linux

• Process management and scheduling

• Memory management (virtual memory, paging)

• File systems and I/O

• Network stack and sockets

• Compiler optimizations

• Static/dynamic libraries

• Dynamic linking and loading

• System calls and ABI stability

• CPU cache optimization

Compensation

$150,000 - $250,000 a year

Salary will be based on experience and fit for the role.

We look forward to having you join our growing team as we bring commercial technology to the hardest problems within the Department of Defense!