Senior Software Engineer

Senior / Staff Software Engineer (AI + Secure Data Infrastructure) — Mission-Driven National Security Startup (NYC or VA, Hybrid)

About the Opportunity

We're partnering with a rapidly growing, AI-driven infrastructure company operating in the U.S. national security and intelligence ecosystem. Backed by strong seed-stage funding and already securing multiple government contracts, they are now expanding their early engineering team to build secure data-sharing middleware that eliminates silos across mission-critical environments.

This is a rare opportunity to join as one of the earliest engineers, shaping the platform's core architecture while delivering agentic services that directly support U.S. defense and intelligence missions. If you thrive in fast-paced, high-ownership environments and want your work to have real national-level impact, this role is built for you.

What You'll Do

• Build, deploy, and support
  mission-critical backend services
  powering a secure, AI-enabled data platform.
• Launch
  agentic systems leveraging LLMs, embeddings, and inference
  into high-security production environments.
• Develop robust ML pipelines and services using Python/JavaScript.
• Design and maintain scalable infrastructure using
  Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS
  (S3, Lambda, RDS).
• Work across the entire data stack — from ingestion and permissioning to deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
• Partner closely with founders and cross-functional stakeholders to translate complex intelligence problems into elegant engineering solutions.
• Own major technical decisions and help set engineering standards as the team scales.

What We're Looking For

Experience & Background

• 5–15 years of backend engineering experience, with strong depth in Python and distributed systems.
• A proven track record
  shipping agentic services using LLMs into production
  .
• Experience handling and securing
  large-scale, sensitive data
  .
• Prior work in early-stage startups or entrepreneurial teams where autonomy is essential.

Technical Skills

• Proficiency in Python/JS for ML development.
• Hands-on experience with
  Docker, Kubernetes
  , and AWS infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of data security, permissioning, and interoperability across AWS services.

Soft Skills

• High ownership mindset and comfort operating in ambiguity.
• Thrives solving hard technical problems in fast-moving environments.
• Mission-oriented, collaborative, and proactive.
• Ideally, we want candidates who have experience launching or owning early-stage products or working in early-stage startups.

And finally... Who are we? FORT -
Future of Recruiting Technologists is a technical & IT search consultancy that specialises in placing experienced professionals & teams with leading technology companies in the North of England. We strive to provide our candidates with the most transformative opportunities available. For our clients we understand that technical expertise alone does not make for the best employee. We take time to ensure a strong cultural and technical fit through deep understanding of our client's business and project needs. Ultimately, we pair technologists with businesses based on more than just skills. Our values and standards are the bedrock of every interaction; Continual Development, Compassion and Consistency.