Senior Software Engineer

At Skyways, we are building the future of air transportation with fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. Backed by significant funding, including a $37M STRATFI contract from the U.S. Air Force, we operate at the intersection of commercial and defense markets. Our aircraft are already in production and flying real missions for paying customers.

Based in Austin, TX and backed by top investors including Y Combinator, Skyways blends rapid iteration with real world deployment. As we scale the team, we are looking for people who want to build real hardware, ship real systems, and help define a new category of aviation.

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to own and evolve SkyNav, our mission planning and ground control software. This role is heavily frontend-focused and sits at the intersection of UX, real-time data, and autonomy. You’ll be building the primary interface our operators, customers, and internal teams use to plan missions, visualize aircraft behavior, and make real-world decisions.

If you like turning complex systems into intuitive, fast, and reliable user experiences and want those experiences to directly control real aircraft, this role is for you.

What You'll Do::
• Own the frontend development of SkyNav, our mission planner and ground control application.
• Design and implement intuitive, high performance user interfaces for mission planning, monitoring, and visualization.
• Build rich, interactive experiences for maps, timelines, telemetry, and geospatial data.
• Work closely with product and flight teams to iterate quickly based on operator feedback from live, in the field and forward deployed missions, including time spent at flight test ranges and customer sites.
• Collaborate closely with autonomy, GNC, flight operations, and backend engineers to translate real world requirements into usable operator interfaces.
• Improve frontend architecture, performance, reliability, and maintainability as SkyNav scales.
• Contribute to UX, interaction patterns, and technical direction for operator facing tools.
• Participate in code reviews and help raise the frontend engineering bar across the team.

What You'll Bring::
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, primarily focused on frontend development.
• Strong experience building complex, stateful user interfaces with React.
• Strong JavaScript fundamentals and experience building large scale frontend applications.
• Proven experience shipping a production desktop application using ElectronJS.
• Experience building mission planning, mapping, or visualization heavy applications, including geospatial or 3D components.
• Working proficiency in Python and experience collaborating with backend and autonomy systems.
• Experience working with real time data, operator facing tools, and reliability critical interfaces.
• Solid software engineering fundamentals, including system design, testing, and maintainable architecture.
• Ability to work cross functionally with autonomy, flight operations, and hardware teams in a fast moving environment.

Bonus Points::
• Experience managing complex frontend application state using MobX.
• Experience with geospatial or 3D visualization libraries such as CesiumJS, Three.js, or similar.
• Background in mission planning, mapping, robotics, autonomy, or aviation related software.
• Familiarity with real time systems, telemetry visualization, or control interfaces.
• Experience building operator facing software where clarity and reliability matter more than visual polish.
• Startup experience shipping production software with real users and real consequences.

Want to join our mission? Apply to learn more!

Due to U.S. government contract requirements, this role is limited to U.S. citizens, U.S. permanent residents, or candidates from specific countries authorized under applicable export control regulations.

Skyways is an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other factor protected by applicable local, state or federal laws.