Backend Engineer at Treeswift

In the face of rising threats like severe storms and wildfires, increasing pressure on affordability, and unprecedented demands for system expansion, Treeswift empowers energy companies to modernize their field work to meet the growth and challenges ahead. To accomplish our mission, we deploy our sensors into our customers' field operations, typically on backpacks or vehicles. The resulting trove of LiDAR and imagery data is processed through our AI models to deliver actionable analytics through our web platform. To date, our technology has enabled utilities to reduce wildfire, regulatory and outage risk from vegetation, avoid delays and cost overruns in new construction, and accelerate recovery from severe storms. Since our first utility pilot in June 2024, we have rapidly expanded and now work with three of the five largest utilities in the United States and are expanding across new customers and use cases. To tackle this challenge, we are bringing together a team of mission-driven experts with deep industry experience in robotics (Penn, Caltech, CMU) and enterprise software development (Palantir, Stripe, Oracle, MongoDB). We have raised funding from leading investors including Penny Pritzker’s Inspired Capital. Treeswift is headquartered in lower Manhattan, and maintains an office in Philadelphia. We also have some customer-facing team members based closer to our customer sites (i.e. Bay Area). We strongly support our employees (including software engineers) to visit customer sites — ask us about this! We hope you’ll join us on this journey. THE POSITION - Build and own the backend services and infrastructure behind our web platform, the system our utility customers rely on to act on the analytics we derive from field data. Our backend is primarily Python (Django) backed by PostgreSQL with geospatial capabilities, running on Kubernetes in AWS. You'll work across the full lifecycle: data modeling, API design, authentication, deployment, and operations. This is a role for someone who wants to own systems end-to-end and help scale a platform that is growing rapidly alongside our customer base. - Be comfortable engaging directly with our customers to help build product understanding. Thanks to our close partnerships with some of the largest and most complex utilities in the United Stated, you will have the opportunity to see the impact of your work in the real-world by observing users use our product on a daily basis. - Stay curious, collaborative, and cross-functional while also taking ownership of problems. We translate complex, real-world requirements from a critical industry into high-quality data products, so understanding the business holistically is key. We take pride in managing complexity and providing high-fidelity data that our customers can use to make better-informed decisions. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design, build, and maintain the REST APIs that serve our React frontend and integrate with internal services, owning API design decisions and ensuring our OpenAPI specs stay accurate for frontend type generation - Develop and evolve our PostgreSQL data layer, including geospatial queries via PostGIS, schema migrations, and data modeling for complex domain objects like patrols, work orders, tree inspections, and geospatial boundaries - Own deployment and infrastructure for our backend services, including Docker containerization, Kubernetes deployments on AWS EKS, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code with Terraform/OpenTofu - Collaborate closely with the data platform and ML teams whose pipelines produce the data your APIs serve, and with frontend engineers who consume them daily. WHO YOU ARE - You have 7+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating production web services - You are proficient in Python and comfortable with Django's ORM, migrations, and middleware model (or a comparable framework like FastAPI) - You have experience with PostgreSQL or a solid understanding of database fundamentals: schema design, query optimization, migrations, and operational basics - You have hands-on experience with writing your code to run in Docker: containerized deployments, resource configuration, debugging pod issues, and working with CI/CD pipelines - You understand authentication and authorization patterns: OAuth2, OIDC, JWT validation, and session management - You communicate clearly across technical and non-technical teams and thrive in a collaborative, fast-moving environment BONUS POINTS FOR - Experience with Kubernetes and Terraform/OpenTofu - Experience with geospatial data (PostGIS, GeoJSON, GeoDjango) or domains involving sensor data - Experience with Keycloak or identity provider administration - Prior experience at an early-stage startup where you've had to build and iterate quickly with limited resources - Interest in utilities, infrastructure, and/or field operations and how software supports those domains. WHAT WE OFFER - Equity - Comprehensive medical, dental and vision insurance - Unlimited vacation policy and company holidays - Life insurance - basic life, supplemental life, and dependent life - Disability leave - short-term disability and long-term disability - Company paid parental leave - Retirement savings - Traditional and Roth 401K plans WHAT WE VALUE Mission first. We value team members who are focused on working towards the best outcomes for the customer and the business. Curiosity. We are constantly learning – from each other and from our customers. We aren't afraid to learn we were wrong in the process and adapt our approach accordingly. Owner's mindset. If you see an opportunity for improvement, run with it. We believe that good ideas can come from anywhere, no matter your role. The estimated base salary range for this role is $160,000 to $215,000. Final compensation is determined by skills, experience, qualifications, and location, and does not include the value of any bonuses, benefits, or long-term incentives. This range is disclosed in compliance with the New York City Human Rights Law and applies to NYC-based roles. Compensation may vary for candidates located outside of New York City. Treeswift  is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law. If you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, whether it be alternate forms of material, accessible meeting rooms, etc., please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.