What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Software Engineer position at Archer First Response Systems?
About the Role
We are seeking a highly experienced and hands-on Principal Software Engineer to join our growing team. Come be a part of the effort to develop The Next Generation of Emergency First Response helping to decrease response times, improve outcomes, and save more lives. As a key technical leader, you will drive design, implementation, and delivery of mission-critical (and literally life saving) systems. This role is deeply technical — you will be writing code every day, making architectural decisions, and working across the stack to ensure reliability, scalability, and performance of our systems. You’ll report directly to the CTO and collaborate closely with a small, dedicated team of engineers in a fast-paced startup environment.
Responsibilities
- Lead end-to-end design, development, and deployment of software systems and services.
- Work across the full stack — from embedded/ROS integrations to cloud services and web applications.
- Design, implement, and maintain APIs, distributed systems, and real-time communication pipelines (AMQP, Pub/Sub).
- Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, and deployment workflows (DevOps, QA, automation).
- Provide technical direction and mentorship to other engineers through code reviews, design sessions, and hands-on collaboration.
- Ensure system reliability, performance, and security while balancing speed and scalability.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product and operations to translate requirements into technical solutions.
- Investigate and evaluate emerging technologies that may improve our platform.
Qualifications
- 7 years of hands-on experience as a software engineer (IC), with exposure to QA and DevOps.
- Deep expertise in Python and TypeScript/JavaScript; strong experience with frameworks like Node.js and React.
- Experience working with both SQL and NoSQL databases.
- Strong understanding of cloud environments (preferably GCP) and experience with CI/CD (Azure DevOps Pipelines, GitHub).
- Experience with building applications in containers and deploying to Kubernetes Clusters
- Experience building and consuming REST APIs and Async Messaging Systems.
- Comfortable working in a startup environment — adaptable, resourceful, and execution-focused.
Nice-to-Have
- Experience with or proficiency in Machine Learning pipelines, in particular computer vision
- Experience with embedded development (C/C )
- Proficiency with ROS (Robot Operating System)
- Knowledge of PX4 flight stack.
- Background in drones, robotics, or first-response/mission-critical systems.
Work Environment
- Location: Florida preferred (I-4 Corridor extra preferred), but remote possible. Expectation to travel periodically to Sarasota HQ.
- Small, tight-knit startup team (<10 people).
- High-impact role with significant influence on system architecture and technical direction