Software Engineer - Defense Practice

Navi captures everything a pilot sees and hears and turns it into automated debrief intelligence — sortie-level awareness that has never existed before. The platform is deployed with the United States Air Force, including at the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards, with active integration work on the T-38 and T-6. You're the engineer who owns that side of the house.

About the role

This is the defense engineering role at Navi. Military aviation is not a variant of the flight-school product — different aircraft, different data, different security posture, different definition of a good debrief. You own how Navi works for squadrons, test pilots, and instructor cadres, and you build it in direct contact with the operators flying it.

You'll be at Edwards. You'll be in briefing rooms. You'll sit through debriefs, watch what an IP actually does with the data, and go build it. The feedback loop is days, not quarters.

If you want a clean spec and a well-defined backlog, this isn't it. If you want your code flying on a T-38 by next month, it is.

What you'll do

Own Navi's military product surface end to end — the ingest, the analysis, and the interfaces squadron commanders, instructor pilots, and test pilots depend on

Build the integrations that get flight data off military aircraft and into Navi — telemetry, cockpit audio, avionics formats, and whatever the airframe actually gives you

Turn sortie data into debrief intelligence that holds up to the standard of a military debrief — maneuver analysis, grade sheets, trend detection across a training pipeline

Work on-site at Edwards and other installations, embedded with the operators, translating what they need into what you ship

Navigate the deployment realities of defense environments — restricted networks, accreditation, data handling, and the constraints that come with them

Make the architecture calls that let the military product and the commercial product share a spine without either compromising the other

Be Navi's technical voice in front of Air Force stakeholders — credible in the room, then back at your desk shipping

About you

5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of building and operating complex systems in production

Demonstrated ability to own projects end to end — scoping, design, implementation, launch, iteration — with minimal direction

Deep expertise in at least one core area (backend systems, data engineering, distributed infrastructure, or full-stack) and working fluency across others

Comfortable working directly with non-technical users and translating operator needs into engineering decisions

You stay effective when there's no manual, no clear owner, and the requirements change after the first flight

Willing to travel to military installations regularly and spend real time on the ground with users

U.S. citizen, and eligible to obtain a U.S. security clearance

Nice to have

A former fighter pilot who became a software engineer. If you flew fighters and then taught yourself to build software, this role was written for you — you already know what a debrief is worth and what a bad one costs

Prior service as a military pilot in any airframe, or as a WSO, NFO, or instructor pilot

Experience at a test wing, weapons school, or formal training unit

Familiarity with avionics data formats, flight test instrumentation, or aircraft data buses

Experience building software inside DoW environments — accreditation, ATOs, classified networks

An active or prior security clearance

Early-stage or founding engineering experience

Why this role matters

Air Force pilot training runs on debriefs, and debriefs run on what an instructor can remember and reconstruct. Navi changes that — every sortie, captured and analyzed, for every student in the pipeline. That's a step change in how the Air Force produces pilots, and it happens only if someone builds it right. This role is that someone. What you ship gets used by the people who fly the aircraft, and it either earns their trust in the first debrief or it doesn't.

What you'll get

Early-stage equity — real ownership in a category-defining company

Flight training — earn your pilot's license and build with true domain expertise

Access no engineer gets — flight lines, test squadrons, and the operators using what you built

A role that scales into technical leadership of Navi's defense business as we grow

How we work

Find a way. We don't wait for permission or perfect information. Ideas come from anywhere regardless of title. Figure it out, ship it, iterate.

Creativity over control. First principles over process. We'd rather have a creative solution that's 80% right today than a perfect one next quarter.

Update fast. Come in with a hypothesis, throw it away when the data says otherwise. Ego has no place here.

Intensity with focus. We work hard because the mission demands it. Clarity on what matters is how we make that sustainable.