Software Engineer, Backend (Collection) at Vannevarlabs

Vannevar is a defense technology company building AI to deter our adversaries. In the 21st century, conflict moves at algorithmic speed and foresight equals firepower. Our agentic AI is purpose-built to compete with China—from cross-Strait conflict to gray zone coercion. Trained on the most mission-relevant datasets in defense, our technology models adversary behavior, simulates campaigns, and recommends the best course of action to decision makers. Our AI systems are some of the most trusted in the industry and actively used on the front lines of the Indo-Pacific to keep the peace and save lives. Exceptional technology starts with exceptional people. Vannevar is a small agile team combining world-class engineers with veteran strategists who bring deep expertise in defense and tradecraft. We’re building a company defined by mission impact, user empathy, and disciplined growth. In just three years, we grew from $3M to $80M in ARR, achieved early profitability, and reached unicorn status—proving that disruption doesn’t require an ego, and staying power doesn’t mean standing still. About the role You will be an engineer on the team building systems to collect hard-to-access data. This data forms the foundation of our company’s advantage. Your role is to elevate and extend our existing collection capabilities — strengthening the core engines, improving resilience in adversarial environments, and expanding how this data is exposed through interfaces for agents and other engineering teams. We operate in environments where automated defensive systems are sophisticated and continuously evolving. This role is about designing statistically disciplined, cross-layer systems that remain reliable under that scrutiny without sacrificing scale, stability, or operational integrity. This role requires deep experience with browser automation, anti-bot defenses, fingerprinting and signature mitigation, distributed scraping architectures, and infrastructure designed for sensitive or misattributed environments. You will help shape the evolution of our collection stack end-to-end — from low-level evasion techniques and managed attribution browsing to clean, well-defined tool calls that agents can use predictably and at scale. You’ll collaborate closely across engineering and mission teams, translating real-world data needs into durable technical systems. What you’ll do • Master our data and capabilities. We’ve built world-class data collection for some key national security data sets. Understand how we’ve built it, what our differentiators are, and how to take it to the next level. • Understand our users. You’ll need to understand their missions, challenges, and expectations to build systems that help them. • Shape our collection approach. You understand how our systems interact with defensive systems, and will develop and implement technical plans that keep high-value data flowing. • Build and maintain stable, scalable systems. Our customers operate 24x7 and need access to fresh, rich, operationally-relevant data. You will design collection systems that remain stable under sophisticated automated detection regimes. • Contribute to agentic capability. Ensure the tools you build and collected data is usable by agents (tool-call readiness, retrieval patterns, schemas/metadata, evaluation loops, etc.). Identify gaps where the right data isn’t getting into agent tool calls and coordinate fixes. You might be a fit if you • Care deeply about the mission: the data we collect is enabling massive, generational impact across many national security missions. • Have strong back-end experience and understanding of distributed systems. Prefer typescript/python expertise. • Understand how anti-abuse, bot detection, fraud, or traffic integrity systems analyze traffic and operate at scale. • Are data driven and and have eye for instrumentation and monitoring. • You can reason about how small deviations in protocol behavior, timing, or runtime characteristics propagate into anomaly scores. • Are technically diverse and can adapt your tool stack quickly. • Communicate crisply: can write a one-pager that aligns stakeholders, communicates, risks, and drives action. • You prefer structural resilience over reactive tactics. • Are comfortable making hard prioritization calls with incomplete information. What we value • Deeply understand how network-level and browser-level signatures combine to form a holistic risk profile in modern detection systems. • Experience with web scraping, browser automation, and similar. • Experience with national security problems and workflows, data platform/product work. • Familiarity with agentic systems and what makes data “tool-call ready” • Full stack capability. This team leans heavily into the backend, but does touch the front end from time to time (React). What we look for • Grit and creativity to keep going when faced with a roadblock. • Success in working problems to conclusion and trying different approaches until one works. • Ability to work autonomously. • Demonstrated bias towards achieving an outcome even if it requires helping or doing the job of someone else on another team. • Active TS / SCI Clearance is a plus but not needed What we offer We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include: • Health, dental, and vision insurance • Remote friendly with WeWork access • Unlimited PTO, shared downtime during the federal holiday calendar, and company-wide off time at the end of each year • 401(k) match • Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends • Salary top-up during military reserve duty • Fully paid parental leave • Child and pet care reimbursement during travel Vannevar is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you! IMPORTANT NOTICE We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.