Senior Software Engineer - Agents Platform at Vannevar Labs

About the role

Aplyr's Quick Take

This role is for a Senior Software Engineer focused on developing and improving AI platforms for defense applications. You'll be leading technical initiatives, creating standards for AI Agents, and collaborating with various teams to enhance product offerings. It's primarily an individual contributor role with a strong emphasis on technical leadership.

Good fit

Ideal candidates have over 5 years of experience in backend or machine learning systems, with a knack for building reliable platforms. A collaborative mindset and a passion for innovative AI solutions in a defense context will help you thrive here.

Worth noting

The company is rapidly growing and has achieved unicorn status, which may indicate a dynamic work environment. However, the focus on defense technology might not appeal to everyone, so consider your alignment with their mission.

Vannevar builds AI systems for the Department of War's most consequential missions. We have 125 deployments across every branch and combatant command spanning our core platform and five distinct products. An an example of how we work, when major combat operations started with Iran, we fielded a new product supporting 24/7 operations and 9,000+ users in three months.

How we build is our advantage: we deploy forward with the people who own the mission. Our engineers, product team, and CTO deploy forward to the point of friction, including visiting units in Ukraine. We focus on embedding directly with operational units supporting great power competition with China, combat operations with Iran, and counter-narcotics missions.

About the role

AI Agents are core to Vannevar’s products - powering user-facing experiences, data enrichment pipelines, and asynchronous alerting services. The Agents Platform team builds the platform and tooling to enable all teams across the company to build robust and reliable Agents that are trusted for high-impact Government use cases. You will be a technical leader driving the development and adoption of this platform and helping us innovate in the rapidly changing space of Agentic AI.

What you’ll do

Design and evangelize best practices for building AI Agents
Drive standards and tooling for Agent quality including evaluation frameworks, test suites, and benchmark creation
Partner with internal teams to find emerging product opportunities and build the tooling needed to support them
Collaborate with other platform teams like our data platform and identity access management team to solve governance problems unique to AI Agents
Stay current with emerging Agent techniques, tools, and best practices, particularly in areas like agent architectures, tool calling

What we’re looking for

5+ years of experience building and deploying backend, infrastructure, and/or machine learning systems in production environments
Recent experience and excitement for building with Agent frameworks like LangGraph, Claude SDK, Google ADK, or similar.
Advanced software engineering skills, including experience with distributed systems, APIs, and cloud infrastructure
A history of not only building great tooling, but evangelizing them within a medium-large organization
You have a passion for building reliable, performant AI systems and understand how they create value for end users
U.S. Person status is required as this position will require the ability to access U.S only data systems

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.

Skills & Tags

go rust machine learning ai backend data product design

Aplyr's read

Vannevar Labs develops cutting-edge AI for defense, attracting tech-savvy professionals passionate about national security and innovative technology solutions.
Synthesized from recent postings & public sources

What's promising

•Focuses on advanced AI solutions with real-world defense applications.
•Opportunities in high-impact roles requiring security clearance, indicating trust and responsibility.
•Growing portfolio of roles suggests expansion and diverse career paths.

What to watch

•High-security clearance requirements limit applicant pool.
•Defense focus may not align with all tech professionals' values.
•Limited public information about company culture and work-life balance.

Why Vannevar Labs

•Specializes in AI for national security, a niche market.
•Roles like 'Mission Lead' and 'Forward Deployed Engineer' highlight unique operational focus.
•Emphasizes security-clearance roles, indicating high trust and responsibility.

Aplyr’s read is generated by AI from public sources. Was it useful?