---
title: 'Software Engineer — Fleet at Specter'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-fleet-specter-san-francisco-5tm2vh5drfnf'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Software Engineer — Fleet at Specter

- **Company:** Specter
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/0c92d7fa-34eb-48a8-92db-8ff213acdd6f

## Job description

Company Background Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world.

Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment.

Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.

## The Role

We are looking for a Software Engineer to lead the architecture and operation of our fleet management, deployment, and recovery systems. Every device we field operates over a long-range wireless link and must remain fully resilient without physical intervention—making fleet reliability a core distributed systems problem.

We are seeking a strong candidate with hands-on experience building software for physical devices and a clear engineering perspective. The core workflow centers on three main pillars: self-testing devices that continuously report status, reliable software deployment pipelines with verified delivery, and a unified control plane providing real-time operational visibility. In this position, you will be responsible for architecting and implementing these core systems end-to-end.

To support these capabilities, our tech stack spans Rust for systems, C on embedded hardware, NixOS for system images, Python for fleet services, and TypeScript for the control plane. We are looking for an engineer eager to work across all of these layers to ensure our control plane seamlessly reflects and manages device state in the field.

## Responsibilities

Fleet Control Plane

- Architect and build the unified control plane providing real-time operational visibility across every device fielded over long-range wireless links.
- Own the underlying data model to reconcile claimed vs. actual device states and ensure seamless state representation across the entire tech stack (TypeScript, Python, NixOS, Rust, C).
- Design targeted execution pathways that enable real-time operational management at the device, site, or customer fleet level.
- Maintain control plane trustworthiness and convergence during partial failures or when significant portions of the fleet are offline or unreachable.

Updates & Rollouts

- Architect reliable deployment pipelines that handle over-the-air image and firmware updates with verified delivery over constrained wireless links.
- Implement staged rollout strategies and automatic rollback mechanisms to ensure fleet resilience against flawed updates.
- Establish rigorous post-deploy validation checks on edge hardware before confirming software releases across production fleets.
- Extend the release pipeline that feeds all of it — how releases get cut, versioned, and promoted from dev to production, with regression gates that block on real signal.
- Extend the release pipeline from dev to production with automated regression gates and end-to-end hardware testing harnesses.

Self-Test & Self-Healing

- Develop self-testing edge software that continuously measures device health at boot and runtime directly on the hardware.
- Build self-healing fault escalation logic to autonomously resolve device failures in the field without physical intervention.
- Engineer resilient recovery mechanisms—such as service restarts, secondary link failover, and fallback images—that guarantee zero site visits.
- Transform raw device events into actionable telemetry, suppressing noise while automatically handling routine operational issues.

## Qualifications

- Proven experience writing production code in systems languages (Rust, C/C++, Go, or Python) with a deep focus on fleet reliability, performance, and hardware-level failure modes.
- Hands-on background architecting software for physical devices (embedded, IoT, edge).
- Demonstrated success designing unified fleet control planes and data models to reconcile target versus actual device state across high-scale distributed deployments.
- Strong distributed systems instincts: building for partial failures, managing state convergence over lossy networks, and developing self-healing fault-escalation logic for zero site visits.
- Track record of shipping over-the-air (OTA) update pipelines, staged rollouts, and automatic rollbacks with post-deploy edge verification over constrained wireless links.
- Solid networking fundamentals (DNS, firewalls, VPNs, subnets, secure remote access) and experience operating across the full stack from embedded C/Rust to TypeScript control dashboards.
- Nice to have: Experience with sub-OS environments, boot processes, flash storage, and driver integration.
- Nice to have: Experience with declarative build tools and system image management (NixOS, Yocto, Buildroot) for deterministic edge releases.
- Nice to have: Advanced CI/CD pipeline automation (GitHub Actions, Buildkite) integrated with automated regression gates and physical hardware testing harnesses.
- Pragmatic, bias-toward-action engineering mindset focused on delivering reliable operational control planes today while iterating safely.

## About Specter

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Specter builds and deploys long-range wireless sensing networks with AI-powered real-time alerts and semantic search, creating the perception layer for the physical world.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not publicly disclosed)
- **Headquarters**: Not publicly available (likely US based on website language and job postings)
- **Founded**: Not publicly available
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- Primary industries: Physical security, critical infrastructure monitoring, industrial IoT, real-time situational awareness
- Target customers: Enterprise and government – including energy companies, data centers, construction firms, ports, stadiums, industrial facilities, and campuses
- Mission statement: "Creating a Software Defined Physical World" – providing instant awareness through real-time alerts, semantic search, and a map-based view of every event

## Products & Services
- **Specter Platform**: A SaaS-based physical intelligence platform that ingests data from long-range wireless sensors (video, thermal, acoustic) and applies general AI (natural language alerts) to detect events such as unauthorized access, safety hazards, equipment anomalies, fires, spills, and perimeter breaches. Features include semantic search, live and historical event detection, and complete situational awareness dashboards.
- **Long-Range Wireless Sensing Network**: Proprietary hardware and software for rugged, wide-area coverage without trenching – deployed across refineries, deserts, offshore platforms, construction sites, and other harsh environments.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue not publicly available; company is actively hiring (Software Engineer – Systems listing) and has a live product across multiple industry verticals.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly available
- **Growth Signals**: Recent website updates as of June 2026; expanding to new use cases (energy, data centers, construction, ports, stadiums); job openings indicate scaling engineering team.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Long-range wireless sensing** that eliminates blind spots without trenching or on-site personnel – a differentiator for remote and harsh environments.
- **General AI with natural language alerts** – users set and query alerts in plain English, lowering the barrier for security and operations teams.
- **Multimodal sensing** (video, thermal, acoustic) combined with real-time analytics for high-fidelity event detection (e.g., PPE compliance, spills, equipment theft, person-down incidents).
- Focus on **critical infrastructure** where downtime or security gaps carry high stakes, creating deep vertical-specific moats.

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding horizontal deployment across energy, data centers, construction, logistics, and campus security.
- Deepening AI capabilities through real-time semantic search and event detection to replace traditional CCTV monitoring.
- Building a “software-defined physical world” that unifies disparate sensors into a single intelligent layer.

## Why Work Here
- Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI + IoT systems that monitor real-world infrastructure at scale.
- Engineering culture likely emphasizes distributed systems, computer vision, edge computing, and high-reliability software (based on job description for Software Engineer – Systems).
- Fast-paced startup environment with a clear product-market fit across multiple verticals.
- Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated; job posting does not specify location, but likely offers flexibility.

## Sources
1. [specter.co](https://specter.co/)
2. [specter.co/product](https://specter.co/product)
3. [specter.co/industries](https://specter.co/industries)
4. [specter.co/features](https://specter.co/features)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com - Software Engineer – Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/fe26a690-7934-46f4-bce2-8d8c5495a0dc)

## Other roles at Specter

- [Wireless Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/wireless-software-engineer-specter-san-francisco-zvjchm89fzv0) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-applied-ai-specter-san-francisco-p7er9310dx06) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Antenna Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-antenna-engineer-specter-san-francisco-xea2760wvrkw) — San Francisco, CA
- [Platform Site Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/platform-site-reliability-engineer-specter-san-francisco-c9mhsvjd32qq) — San Francisco, CA
- [Recruiting Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiting-coordinator-specter-san-francisco-y4c4fq3ctm2y) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Deployment Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-deployment-strategist-specter-san-francisco-81ba238x3y8m) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Accounting Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-accounting-manager-specter-san-francisco-c560c7hymx09) — San Francisco, CA
- [Hardware Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-test-engineer-specter-san-francisco-0tgzpmm9kqx3) — San Francisco, CA
- [Hardware Test Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-test-lead-specter-san-francisco-m6ynp7p1kq82) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-recruiter-specter-san-francisco-rx0h3svbzxxs) — San Francisco, CA