Staff Software Engineer - GCS Team

Flytrex runs drone food delivery at scale in US cities. The GCS (Ground Control Station) team builds the brain of the operation: the system that takes an order, plans a flight, coordinates airspace, and safely delivers a package to a backyard, thousands of times a week. We're scaling from a handful of sites to a national network, and the systems need to scale with us.

About The Role This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You'll be one of the most senior engineers in the company, setting the direction for how the GCS is built, and writing a meaningful share of the hardest code yourself.

• Own the architecture of a distributed, safety-critical, real-time system, and evolve it for 10x the flight volume without 10x the incidents.
• Lead the technically hardest projects end-to-end: from a vague business need, through design and cross-team alignment, to production.
• Raise the bar for the whole team: design reviews, code reviews, engineering standards, and testing strategy. Make everyone around you better.
• Be the person on call when it counts. When a production issue is deep and unclear, you're the one who gets to the root cause and closes the loop.
• Partner directly with product, operations, hardware, and regulatory to turn constraints into good engineering decisions.

Why here Ownership without bureaucracy. A small, strong team with a mission you can point at in the sky. If you want to shape how autonomous delivery gets built, rather than maintain someone else's decisions, this is the role.

Requirements:

• 8+ years building backend or distributed systems, including several years leading complex projects with real production impact.
• You've designed systems that had to be correct, not just up. Experience with safety-critical, real-time, or physical-world systems is a strong plus.
• Deep engineering judgment. You know when to build, when to simplify, and when to say no.
• You lead through influence and example, not title. People want to work with you because you make hard things clear.
• Direct, no-ego communicator. You give and take feedback well, and you're comfortable being wrong in public and fixing it fast.