---
title: 'Backend Software Engineer - Defense at Palantir Technologies'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/backend-software-engineer-defense-palantir-technologies-washington-djesfpt6ev1c'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Backend Software Engineer - Defense at Palantir Technologies

- **Company:** Palantir Technologies
- **Location:** Washington, DC
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-02-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/palantir/1345438c-ebfc-4fa5-b545-30c1414f317c

## Job description

A World-Changing Company

Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.

## The Role

Palantir's defense product vertical builds mission-critical products for the modern warfighter. We provide a complete ecosystem where customers can securely integrate and visualize their data, and build sophisticated, full-fledged programs such as common operating pictures, alert-triaging inboxes, and resource allocation planning tools driven by rich-ML models. Our customers use our defense offering to perform rich analyses that drive core operations within their organizations - these programs are relied upon for daily operations in the command centers and battlefronts of militaries across the world.

Backend Software Engineers at Palantir build software at scale to transform how organizations use data. Our Software Engineers are involved throughout the product lifecycle, from idea generation, design, prototyping, and production delivery. You will collaborate closely with technical and non-technical teammates to understand our customers' problems and build products that solve them. We encourage movement across teams to share context, skills, and experience, so you'll learn about many different technologies and aspects of each product. Engineers work autonomously and make decisions independently, within a community that will support and challenge you as you grow and develop, becoming a strong technical contributor and engineering leader.

Your day-to-day workflow will vary, adapting to the requirements of our users and the technical challenges that arise. One day, you may find yourself collaborating with other engineers to architect a new system that enables a novel workflow, the next you could be fine-tuning performance to enable low-latency operational outcomes.

Our Product Development organization is made up of small teams of Software Engineers. Each team focuses on a specific aspect of a product and work collaboratively to build cross functional capabilities, streamline user workflows and continuously improve our software's efficiency and reliability.

We're hiring engineers who are passionate about solving real-world problems and empowering developers and end-users to do their work optimally. If you’re motivated to develop reliable, performant, scalable systems and design robust APIs and primitives, please join us.

Some examples of product work you could work on are:

- Build for high-scale, collaborative, geospatial workflows ([Gaia](https://palantir.highspot.com/items/646ccc59a8597170f9609759?lfrm=shp.2))
- Design sophisticated frameworks to enable complex workflows across applications in a single workspace
- Develop the next generation of real-time collaborative tooling and data-analysis solutions ([Secure Collaboration](https://www.palantir.com/offerings/defense/secure-collaboration/capabilities/))

Core Responsibilities

- Architecting, developing, and maintaining high-performance, scalable backend services that underpin our our operational data and AI systems
- Maintaining high coding standards through the development of guidelines, active participation in code reviews, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and knowledge sharing among your team
- Building robust APIs for use by front-end developers and interfacing external systems, and collaborating with front-end developers to integrate user-facing elements with server-side logic
- Designing efficient data structures and algorithms to manage large-scale and high throughput data
- Optimizing applications for speed and scalability through performance analysis
- Actively improve user workflows by collaborating with cross-functional teams, ensuring seamless experiences across product boundaries and a cohesive user experience

Technologies We Use

- Different backend languages, including Java, Rust, Python and Go
- Distributed systems technologies such as Kafka, Cassandra, Elasticsearch and Spark
- Docker and Kubernetes for containerization and orchestration
- Industry-standard build tooling, including Gradle and GitHub

## What We Value

- A deep understanding of server-side logic, efficient data handling, and distributed systems
- Strong focus on creating user-oriented workflows and solutions, crossing product boundaries to deliver cohesive and solid user workflows that ensure a seamless and intuitive user experience
- Experience building high-quality software in a fast-paced CI/CD development environment
- Ability to work collaboratively in teams of technical and non-technical individuals and understand how technical decisions impact the people who will use what you're building
- Skill and comfort working in a constantly evolving environment with dynamic objectives and iteration with users

## What We Require

- Experience in designing and developing features and improvements, as well as supporting and maintaining, live backend systems
- In-depth understanding of data structures, system architecture, API development for microservices frameworks, distributed systems and other backend-related concepts and best practices
- Engineering background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics or similar field
- Strong coding skills with demonstrated proficiency in programming languages, such as Java, C++, Python, Rust, or similar languages
- Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to iterate quickly with teammates, incorporating feedback and holding a high bar for quality
- Eligibility and willingness to obtain a US Security clearance

## About Palantir Technologies

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Palantir builds software platforms that empower organizations to integrate their data, decisions, and operations at scale.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NYSE: PLTR)
- **Headquarters**: Miami, Florida, United States
- **Founded**: 2003
- **Founders**: Not explicitly listed in provided sources (widely reported as Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and Stephen Cohen)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Data integration, artificial intelligence, defense & intelligence, commercial analytics
- **Target customers**: Government agencies (defense, intelligence, civil), large commercial enterprises, and regulated industries
- **Mission or purpose**: “Build foundational software for tomorrow” and design technology that helps institutions protect liberty while making human‑driven analysis of real‑world data possible [palantir.com/about]

## Products & Services
- **Palantir Gotham**: Platform for the intelligence and defense community, enabling counterterrorism investigations and operations.
- **Palantir Foundry**: Foundational data operations platform providing data management, logic authoring, ontology development, analytics, and workflow building.
- **Palantir Apollo**: Continuous delivery platform that orchestrates upgrades and manages the infrastructure hosting other Palantir platforms.
- **Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP)**: Generative AI platform with secure connectivity to third‑party LLMs, development toolchain for AI agents, AI‑enabled end‑user applications, and evaluation frameworks for governing AI workflows.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: $100.6 B (as of the search date, approximate)
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue of $4.5 B (latest fiscal year); IPO in 2020
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Public market investors; major U.S. and allied government agencies, commercial clients across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and logistics
- **Growth Signals**: 3,843 employees (+20.2% YoY, +998 people); operations in 12 countries; workforce distributed across 49 countries; continued expansion of AIP and commercial customer base

## Competitive Advantages
- **Engineer‑in‑the‑field model**: Palantir sends engineers directly to customers to deploy products, integrate data, and produce operational results in weeks, not years.
- **Privacy‑by‑design**: Built‑in privacy‑protective capabilities, governance tools, and a strong track record of working with advocacy groups on responsible data use.
- **Platform lock‑in**: Deep integration with customer data and workflows through Ontology and custom applications makes switching costs extremely high.
- **Long‑term government contracts**: Decades‑long relationships with U.S. and allied defense/intelligence agencies provide stable revenue and high barriers to entry.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI leadership**: Making AIP the standard for secure, governed generative AI deployment in regulated industries.
- **Commercial expansion**: Growing the commercial customer base beyond government, especially in supply chain, healthcare, and finance.
- **Continuous delivery**: Leveraging Apollo to ensure rapid, safe updates across all deployments, reducing maintenance overhead for customers.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Mission‑driven engineering environment where engineers work directly on the hardest problems for critical institutions. “We’re engineers, not academics.”
- **Autonomy and impact**: New hires are trusted with responsibility from day one and are paired with a mentor. “Palantir trusts our early talent engineers to make an impact from day one.”
- **Flexibility**: Take‑what‑you‑need time‑off policy; offices closed for two weeks in December; flexible working arrangements including remote work when appropriate.
- **Benefits**: Generous paid parental leave, fertility services, adoption assistance, equity programs, mental health support (virtual therapy, meditation), and robust healthcare coverage.
- **Diversity & inclusion**: Equal Employment Opportunity employer; publishes UK Gender Pay Gap Report; strives for “many pathways to success” beyond traditional career ladders. [palantir.com/careers/life-at-palantir]

## Sources
1. [LinkedIn Company Page](https://linkedin.com/company/palantir-technologies)
2. [Palantir About Page](https://www.palantir.com/about/)
3. [Palantir Careers – Life at Palantir](https://www.palantir.com/careers/life-at-palantir/)
4. [Palantir Careers – Open Positions](https://www.palantir.com/careers/open-positions/)
5. [SEC Form 10‑K / Annual Report (FY2025)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000132165526000021/fy2025palantirars.pdf)

## Other roles at Palantir Technologies

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- [Deployment Strategist - US Government](https://feeny.ai/job/deployment-strategist-us-government-palantir-technologies-miami-ezp5zy4r6f4j) — Miami, FL
- [Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer, New Grad - US Government](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-infrastructure-engineer-new-grad-us-government-palantir-zeehkfhpbe2b) — Honolulu, HI
- [Forward Deployed Infrastructure Engineer, New Grad - UK Government](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-infrastructure-engineer-new-grad-uk-government-palantir-4km7jnmy04ta) — London, United Kingdom
- [U.S. Indirect Tax Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/u-s-indirect-tax-manager-palantir-technologies-palo-alto-npdbxr47k7m1) — Palo Alto, CA
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