---
title: 'Software Engineer, Real-Time Generalist at Swarm Aero'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-real-time-generalist-swarm-aero-san-francisco-5z37k7re8vjg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Software Engineer, Real-Time Generalist at Swarm Aero

- **Company:** Swarm Aero
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $190k–$275k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-10-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/swarmaero/0ab05da6-7a1b-4632-b08f-0ef663efb33f

## Job description

Swarm Aero is redefining air power, building the largest swarming UAV and the most versatile swarming aircraft network in the world. The company is moving quickly to launch the first aircraft designed specifically for swarming, as well as the Command & Control software to mobilize swarms of thousands of heterogeneous autonomous assets and empower human operators to achieve superhuman results. The team has created and exited multiple startups, negotiated defense deals worth billions of dollars, and designed and built 30+ novel aircraft, with aerospace experience from Scaled Composites, Airbus, Archer Aviation, Blue Origin, and Boom Supersonic.

The Opportunity Most full stack roles ask you to move pixels around a dashboard. This one asks you to help architect the system that controls the largest drone swarm on the planet. You’ll join the team building Legion, Swarm Aero’s Command & Control platform. Legion enables a single operator to plan, direct, and execute missions across a networked swarm of heterogeneous aircraft in real time, over intermittent communications, and at a scale nobody else in the industry is attempting. This is not a role maintaining a finished product or adding features around the edges. You’ll help define the architecture, establish core technical patterns, and build entirely new capabilities for a problem space with little prior art. The work spans real-time distributed systems, dense telemetry visualization, collaborative mission planning, and operator interfaces where clarity and reliability directly affect mission outcomes. You’ll have meaningful influence over what we build, how we build it, and how the platform evolves as the team and system scale.

## WHAT YOU’LL DO

- Help architect and build the full stack of a Command & Control system directing large swarms of heterogeneous aircraft
- Design the foundational systems, technical patterns, and interfaces that will shape Legion as it scales
- Build collaborative, real-time infrastructure that allows operators to control large numbers of aircraft simultaneously, including through degraded or intermittent communications
- Create new ways to represent and interact with vehicle telemetry, sensor data, mission schedules, crew resources, data links, and other complex operational information
- Take ambiguous operational problems from first principles to deployed capability, often without an existing playbook to follow
- Own major features end to end, from system design and technical architecture through implementation, testing, and deployment
- Work closely with operators, designers, and engineers across software, autonomy, and aircraft systems
- Ship early and iterate quickly, supported by strong CI/CD, QA, and DevSecOps practices

## WHAT YOU'VE DONE

- Degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience
- 4+ years building complex full stack applications with real frontend and backend depth
- Strong UI/UX instincts and the tools to back them up
- Built production web interfaces with React or a comparable modern framework

## WHAT SETS YOU APART

- Experience with both immediate mode (games, simulation) and retained mode UI paradigms
- A track record with performance-sensitive application development
- Familiarity with video streaming protocols
- WebGL/OpenGL experience
- Experience with geospatial applications
- Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Secret security clearance. Active Secret clearance preferred but not required.

## WHY THIS ROLE

You'll be one of the earliest engineers shaping how humans command autonomous systems at scale, work that's currently being defined in real time, by a small team, with your fingerprints on the architecture. If you want to build the future of human-swarm interaction rather than maintain someone else's, this is that seat.

ITAR requirement To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Swarm Aero is an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse backgrounds and experiences and make employment decisions without regard to race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, or disability.

## What We Offer

- Meaningful equity in a high-growth defense technology company
- Competitive base salary commensurate with experience
- Medical, dental, vision, and 401k
- PTO and paid sick leave
- Monthly wellness stipend
- Daily catered lunch (office)
- Paid parental leave
- Direct impact on a critical national security mission
- A world-class team of engineers and operators solving genuinely hard problems

## About Swarm Aero

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Swarm Aero builds large, swarming uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) for defense, logistics, disaster response, and sensing missions, controlled by a proprietary mission-level autonomy platform.
- **Entity Type**: Private startup (Series A, $35M raised in March 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Oxnard, California, USA (with a manufacturing facility in Fayetteville, Arkansas)
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Danny Goodman (CEO), Oliver Palmer (COO), Peter Kalogiannis (Co-Founder & Chief Engineer, departed April 2026)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Defense & aerospace, UAV swarm systems, advanced manufacturing
- **Target customers**: Government/military (B2G) – specifically U.S. Department of Defense and allied forces; also logistics, disaster response, and environmental monitoring agencies
- **Mission statement**: “Building the largest UAV swarm on the planet.” (LinkedIn tagline)

## Products & Services
- **Swarm-Scale Command & Control (C2) Platform**: Browser-based, platform-agnostic UI that enables small teams to coordinate thousands of uncrewed vehicles in communications-limited, contested environments.
- **Universal Swarm Node (UAV)**: A Group 5 drone designed from the ground up for swarming – not expendable (like a Switchblade) nor exquisite (like an F-35), but recoverable and mass-producible.
- **Mission-Level Autonomy Software**: Translates user intent into vehicle-level behaviors that update in real-time as the swarm detects changing conditions; includes collaborative autonomy for superhuman agility.
- **Manufacturing as a Feature**: High-rate composite manufacturing processes adapted from other industries to achieve unprecedented airframe throughput (targeting 1,000+ units per year).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $35M (Series A closed March 2026; prior $2M pre-seed in 2022 and $22M seed in 2023)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Two Sigma Ventures, Silent Ventures (co-leads Series A), Construct Capital, Alumni Ventures, Founders Fund
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount: 50 employees as of mid-2026 (+94.6% YoY)
  - Opened a manufacturing facility in Fayetteville, Arkansas in early 2026
  - Plans to more than double headcount by end of 2026 (per Axios)
  - First flight of the Group 5 drone expected within two years

## Competitive Advantages
- **Team expertise**: Leadership collectively has 100+ years of uniformed U.S. military service, built 30+ novel aircraft, and contributed to the highest production rate composite aircraft and rocket engines ever.
- **Manufacturing moat**: Concurrent design of factory and aircraft enables rapid scaling from prototype to 1,000+ units; “two-thirds of the cost of building a new aircraft is generally headcount” – Swarm designs for low-cost, high-rate production.
- **Software-defined swarm**: Browser-based C2 and edge-compute sensor mesh bring cloud-like agility to contested environments, allowing small teams to control massive swarms.
- **Differentiation**: Neither expendable (like loitering munitions) nor exquisite (like stealth bombers) – a recoverable, affordable mass that overmatches adversaries through numbers.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale manufacturing**: The new Arkansas facility is central to achieving high-rate composite production and reducing unit cost.
- **Headcount growth**: Aggressive hiring across engineering, manufacturing, and operations; 20 active job postings as of mid-2026.
- **First flight milestone**: Complete design, build, and test of the Group 5 drone within the next two years to enter operational service.
- **Multi-domain expansion**: Plans to deploy a combination of air, sea, and ground assets tailored to diverse missions (cargo, fire suppression, adaptive sensing, resilient communications).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Move Fast and Make Things” – a startup ethos focused on rapid design-build-test cycles and real-world impact in defense tech.
- **Work environment**: Likely on-site given manufacturing and hardware focus; offices in Oxnard, CA (HQ) and Fayetteville, AR (factory).
- **Team**: Work alongside veterans of Scaled Composites, Anduril, Northrop Grumman, and leaders who have built five billion-dollar startups and software with 4.6B combined active users.
- **Perks**: Not publicly detailed, but typical for well-funded defense startups (competitive compensation, equity, mission-driven work). The company uses modern tools (Kubernetes, Docker, Python, MATLAB, etc.) and offers roles from engineering to program management.
- **Growth opportunity**: Early-stage company with strong funding and a clear path to scale – employees can have outsized impact on product and manufacturing processes.

## Sources
1. [Swarm Aero Website](https://www.swarm.aero/)
2. [Swarm Aero LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/swarm-aero)
3. [Craft.co Company Profile](https://craft.co/swarm-aero)
4. [Axios – Exclusive: Big-drone builder Swarm Aero raises $35 million](https://www.axios.com/2026/03/11/swarm-aero-seriesa-drone-factory)
5. [Swarm Aero Team Page](https://www.swarm.aero/team-2)

## Other roles at Swarm Aero

- [Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/systems-engineer-swarm-aero-california-8be87vvhg1xa) — California
- [Quality Engineering Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/quality-engineering-lead-swarm-aero-fayetteville-pmv0w473zr2q) — Fayetteville
- [Staff Software Engineer, Real-Time Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-real-time-systems-swarm-aero-remote-qaa3zbaht54y)
- [Software Engineer, Real-Time Systems (Early Career)](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-real-time-systems-early-career-swarm-aero-remote-etf6jg6nqawp)
- [Software Engineer, Autonomy](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-autonomy-swarm-aero-remote-8tmzhrrhz25b)
- [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-forward-deployed-engineer-swarm-aero-remote-81nveh0d3ybx)
- [Non-Destructive Inspection Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/non-destructive-inspection-lead-swarm-aero-fayetteville-216wj8aww8nx) — Fayetteville
- [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-swarm-aero-remote-0ezqspwz8w7w)
- [Staff Software Engineer, Autonomy](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-autonomy-swarm-aero-remote-n3adrczb5mkr)
- [Avionics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/avionics-engineer-swarm-aero-oxnard-skj4y2qyrw27) — Oxnard, CA