Backend Software Engineer - Distribution

Backend Software Engineer - Distribution 

Location: Onsite | Rosslyn, VA or Seattle, WA

Employment Type: Full-time, salaried, with full benefits

The Company & Mission:

Our client builds mission-critical software for military logistics and sustainment. Their flagship product is an AI-enabled logistics command and control platform that gives commanders a single, real-time operating picture of their sustainment fight, from inventory and distribution to medical and operational planning, even in degraded and contested environments.

They're not a traditional defense contractor. They're a small, fast-moving team that combines deep operational experience in and with the DoD with the software discipline of the best product companies, applying that combination to a customer set that desperately needs it. They stay close to their users by embedding directly with military units during exercises and rotations, and they ship constantly based on what they learn.

The U.S. military and its allies face a real logistics modernization problem. Our client is building the software to solve it.

What This Role is All About:

Our client's Distribution team builds the software that determines how supplies, equipment, and other critical resources move through complex logistics networks, from requirements and inventory availability through planning, allocation, routing, dispatch, tracking, and delivery. Military distribution is a dynamic systems problem: routes change, transportation assets become unavailable, priorities shift, and communications degrade, so the software supporting these decisions has to continuously reconcile changing information into reliable, executable actions.

As a Backend Software Engineer focused on Distribution, you'll design and build the production systems at the center of these workflows, owning services that model logistics networks, coordinate movement across nodes and transportation modes, and let users rapidly plan and replan as operational conditions change. This is not a generic backend role, they're looking for engineers who've built software where system decisions directly affect real-world operations: logistics, transportation, fulfillment, routing, dispatch, warehousing, marketplace operations, or supply chain.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Own the architecture and development of backend services supporting distribution capabilities across the platform, including transportation and movement planning, routing and dispatch, shipment execution, asset and capacity allocation, and multi-modal transportation


• Translate real-world logistics workflows into durable domain models, APIs, and event-driven systems that reconcile inventory, demand, transportation capacity, location, time, and priority across distributed networks


• Develop performant, production-grade services in Go, integrating optimization and planning capabilities directly into operational software so algorithmic recommendations become reliable, executable workflows


• Design systems capable of handling partial, delayed, conflicting, or changing information while maintaining a reliable representation of operational state, including in bandwidth-constrained and low-connectivity environments


• Partner directly with military users and domain experts to understand how distribution actually operates and convert ambiguous requirements into scalable software


• Establish strong engineering practices around testing, observability, performance, and failure recovery, and provide technical leadership through system design, code review, and mentorship

What You Bring:

• 7+ years of backend, platform, or distributed systems engineering experience, with substantial ownership of production-grade software


• Demonstrated experience building production systems in logistics, transportation, fulfillment, routing, dispatch, shipment management, warehousing, marketplace operations, supply chain, or a similarly complex operational domain


• Experience building software that supports real-world planning or operational decision-making, not just transactional or CRUD-oriented backend work


• Strong programming skills in one or more performant languages such as Go, C++, Java, or Rust


• Strong understanding of distributed systems: service architecture, asynchronous processing, messaging, state management, and failure handling


• Demonstrated ability to independently lead complex technical projects from ambiguous problem definition through production operation

Bonus Points:

• Experience with production optimization or planning systems involving routing, scheduling, allocation, or other constrained decision-making problems, and familiarity with approaches like MIP, LP, CP, graph algorithms, or vehicle-routing techniques


• Familiarity with optimization libraries or tools such as OR-Tools, Gurobi, or other commercial solvers


• Experience with geospatial, temporal, transportation, or logistics datasets


• Experience with event-driven systems where information arrives asynchronously from multiple sources


• Experience with systems deployed in constrained environments, including edge compute or unreliable networks


• Experience with military logistics, defense software, or Department of Defense users and systems

Benefits:

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans; premiums 100% covered for all employees; exceptionally low premiums for spouses and dependents


• Basic life insurance and disability 100% covered for all employees; option to purchase additional life insurance


• "Take the time off that you need, when you need it" paid time off policy, not accrual based


• Generous company holiday calendar including a December shutdown


• Supportive leave of absence program including military service, medical events, and parental leave


• Full 401(k) retirement plan for all full-time eligible employees


• Company-funded commuter benefits


• Free access to on-site gym at the office


• Highly competitive equity grants included in the majority of full-time offers as part of total compensation