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Defense Unicorns is seeking a mission-driven Senior Rust Software Engineer to design and implement high-performance, resilient systems that enable human-machine-AI teaming and autonomous capabilities for military operators at the tactical edge.
You will architect and build distributed software systems in Rust optimized for both cloud-native and resource-constrained edge computing environments. Your work spans the full system lifecycle: from architecture and hardware integration through simulation, testing, and field deployment in contested, disconnected environments.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design and implement high-performance distributed systems in Rust for edge and cloud environments
- Participate in system architecture reviews, network topology design, and hardware evaluation
- Develop software supporting human-in-the-loop and human-on-the-loop autonomy workflows
- Build infrastructure for deterministic builds, reproducible environments, and configuration management
- Implement over-the-air (OTA) update mechanisms for field-deployed systems (VMs, containers, embedded packages)
- Integrate software with microcontroller peripherals and hardware buses (SPI, I2C, UART, Ethernet, USB, AXI)
- Develop comprehensive test strategies including unit testing, SITL, HITL, and end-to-end field testing
- Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to deploy and sustain systems in operational environments
- Optimize for performance, reliability, power consumption, and maintainability
Required qualifications:
- Professional experience in software engineering, embedded systems, or firmware development delivering production-grade products
- Strong Rust proficiency; experience with low-level, embedded, or no_std environments preferred
- Experience integrating with microcontroller peripherals and hardware interfaces
- Familiarity with software design, algorithm implementation, debugging, testing, profiling, and performance optimization
- Working knowledge of distributed systems, data distribution, network architectures, networking protocols (TCP/UDP, BLE/LoRa, routing), trust systems, certificate management, encryption, and modern data patterns (CRDTs, offline-first, synchronization)
- Strong communication and cross-disciplinary collaboration skills
- U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain Top Secret/SCI security clearance
Preferred qualifications include experience with autonomy, robotics, human-machine-AI teaming, machine learning techniques, software-defined radio, MANET, industrial/robotics communications, systems optimization for speed/size/power/cost, open-source contributions, and deployment in contested or disconnected edge environments.
