Work with cutting edge AI technology, making the world a safer and more secure place. DroneShield (ASX:DRO) offers an opportunity to solve some of world’s most challenging technical problems in the rapidly growing counterdrone sector. Our customers are militaries, government agencies, airports, critical infrastructure, law enforcement and many others.

With one of the largest listed defence company market capitalisations in Australia, part of the ASX200 index, and having raised approximately $250m in 2024 alone, DroneShield is undergoing hypergrowth stage, fuelled by rapidly increasing use of drones for nefarious applications, from battlefield, to terrorism, to contraband delivery and commercial espionage.

This role is in the DroneShield Sydney headquarters in Sydney CBD. There are approximately 420 staff based in the 4,000sqm facility today, scheduled to grow to approximately 550 staff by end of 2026. Overseas on the ground presence includes Virginia (USA), Netherlands, Denmark, Mexico and Dubai, as well as distributors in over 70 countries globally.

About the role

We're looking for a Backend Engineer to join our Data Engineering team. The team is passionately focused on helping our internal customers, particularly our machine learning and AI teams, interface with our rich data services using robust and performant APIs and data pipelines.

Responsibilities, Duties and Expectations 

• Build new features and capabilities daily in a complex AI microservices and MLOps environment
• Collaborate with other engineers and designers between AI, frontend, backend
• Write and review code with best practices of readability, testing patterns, documentation, reliability, security, and performance considerations in mind
• Drive strong outcomes around test driven development to enhance API product quality and performance
• Own an Agile development mindset, appreciating the benefit of constant improvement, and participating in rituals such as daily stand-ups, sprint planning, team retrospectives, backlog grooming
• Ensure software is designed for reliability, and performance on resource constrained targets
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to team members
• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to deliver on user and business requirements

Qualifications, Experience and Skills 

• 5 – 7 years experience building backend web applications
• Bachelor's or Master's degree with a preference for a Software Engineering, or Computer Science background
• Proficiency in web-based applications and architecture, crafting and implementing highly scalable and performant REST micro-services
• Expertise in developing performant production quality backend services in Python (e.g. Django, FastAPI) and/or Go
• Demonstrated experience in API design, including requirements gathering, versioning, security, extensibility, error handling, testing and documentation
• Familiarity with quality API and backend architecture patterns
• Experience developing, deploying and maintaining backend services using Docker and/or Kubernetes
• Demonstrated passion for collaboration
• Strong communication skills in written and verbal forms, and an ability to communicate complex technical issues to a range of technical and non-technical audiences (management, peers, clients)

Desirable Skills 

• Experience working in API development in a medium-large scale SaaS organisation
• Experience working closely with ambiguous and complex customer requirements, being able to navigate uncertainty, to develop high quality and innovative solutions
• Software development experience in Python, Golang (2 languages preferred)
• Application development with cross-cutting concerns (logging, persistence, security, configuration management, transactional behaviour)
• Development tools including Git, Jira, Confluence, CICD
• Experience with machine learning model development, lifecycle and MLOps
• Experience developing data intensive web applications
• Experience with cloud services like AWS
• Comfortable on the command line in a Linux first environment

Note for recruitment agencies: We do not accept unsolicited candidates from external recruiters unless specifically instructed.