API Engineer (AU)

at  DroneShield Limited

Work with cutting edge technology, making the world a safer and more secure place. DroneShield (ASX:DRO) offers an opportunity to solve some of world’s most challenging technical problems in the Electronic Warfare, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, RF sensing, Sensor Fusion and distributed systems. Working with high profile customers across militaries, government agencies, airports, critical infrastructure, law enforcement and many others.
With one of the largest listed defence company market capitalisations in Australia and having raised approximately $250m in 2024 alone, DroneShield is undergoing hypergrowth stage, fuelled by rapidly increasing use of drones for nefarious applications, from battlefield, to terrorism, to contraband delivery and commercial espionage.
This role is in the DroneShield Sydney headquarters in Pyrmont, Sydney. There are approximately 200 staff based in the 4,000sqm facility today, scheduled to grow to approximately 300 staff by end of 2026. Overseas on the ground presence includes Virginia (USA), Denmark, Germany and Dubai, as well as distributors in over 70 countries globally.

QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

• 5+ years experience building backend and API applications
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree with a preference for a Software Engineering, or Computer Science background
• Proficiency in web-based applications and architecture, crafting and implementing highly scalable and performant gRPC and REST micro-services
• Expertise in developing performant production quality backend services in Go and/or Python
• Demonstrated passion for collaboration and strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Strong communication skills in written and verbal forms, and an ability to communicate complex technical issues to a range of technical and non-technical audiences (management, peers, clients)
• Broad knowledge and understanding of micro-service architectures with basic hands-on experience operating in Linux environments
• Demonstrated experience in API design, including requirements gathering, versioning, security, extensibility, error handling, testing and documentation
• Familiarity with quality API and backend architecture patterns

DESIRABLE SKILLS

• Experience working in API development in a medium-large scale SaaS organisation
• Experience working closely with ambiguous and complex customer requirements, being able to navigate uncertainty, to develop high quality and innovative solutions
• Comfortable on the command line in a Linux first environment
• Software development experience in Python, Golang, Modern C++ (2 languages preferred)
• Application development with cross-cutting concerns (logging, persistence, security, configuration management, transactional behaviour)
• Desirable skills: Development of applications for Linux based embedded devices
• Inter-device communication using gRPC, REST, raw TCP/UDP, or other high performance messaging protocols
• Familiarity with OpenAPI3
• Development tools including Git, Jira, Confluence, CICD
  Note for recruitment agencies: we do not accept floated candidates from external recruiters unless they were instructed to do so

ABOUT THE ROLE

We’re looking for a Software Engineer to join our Embedded - Software Interfaces (ESI) team, passionately focused on helping our internal and external customers to interface with our Embedded devices using robust and performant APIs.

RESPONSIBILITIES, DUTIES AND EXPECTATIONS

• Build new features and capabilities daily in a complex Embedded micro-services environment
• Collaborate with other engineers and designers between Embedded, frontend, and customer tech stacks
• Write and review code with best practices of readability, testing patterns, documentation, reliability, security, and performance considerations in mind
• Drive strong outcomes around test driven development to enhance API product quality and performance
• Own an Agile development mindset, appreciating the benefit of constant improvement, and participating in rituals such as daily stand-ups, sprint planning, team retrospectives, backlog grooming
• Ensure software is designed for reliability, and performance on resource constrained targets
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to team members
• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to deliver on user and business requirements