Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Backend

About Six Robotics At Six Robotics, we build intelligent software that gives Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) the ability to collaborate, adapt on the fly, and execute missions that were previously impossible. From our base in Oslo, our 70+ experts in defence, software, and AI develop our flagship autonomy and swarm platform used by both government and industry. In close partnership with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), we move fast from concept to live deployment, often in the field alongside end users. We work with advanced hardware and software, a modern tech stack, and missions that demand both technical mastery and operational discipline. Everyone is close to the action, from deep technical problem-solving to field operations. We move fast and value clarity, integrity, and teamwork in everything we do. At Six Robotics, every person executes with precision, adapts to changing conditions, and strengthens the team. Getting in is hard, and you’ll be challenged every day. But if you have the skill, the discipline, and the drive to push your limits and always be sharpening your blade, you’ll find no better place to deliver real-world impact while collaborating and learning from the best in the field. About The Role Six Robotics' drones produce a lot of data: flight telemetry, logs, and media. Today, that data lands on the Ground Control Station (GCS) and goes no further. We're building the cloud platform that changes that, and this role is at the centre of it. Once it's in place, engineers and customers alike will be able to understand what happened on a flight, debug failures, learn from every mission, and operate with confidence. It's a meaningful step up in what we offer, on top of a product that already works. You're responsible for getting the data into the platform: cloud services, the ingestion endpoint the GCS uploads to, authentication, and the API behind the dashboard. It's a greenfield project, and we want it to deliver value early, both internally and as something we can put in front of customers. The early calls (cloud platform, deployment model, protocol, and auth design) will be made as a team, and we're hiring you to bring strong, justified opinions into those conversations. You'll work closely with the team that builds the edge software running on the GCS, and alongside the frontend engineer who will build the dashboard. The cloud platform sits between them. What You Will Do

• Design and build the cloud services that ingest flight data from our GCS instances after and during flight.
• Decide and commit to the cloud and infrastructure platform and the deployment model, taking vendor compatibility into account.
• Take the platform from an internal deployment to something we can roll out to customers, and decide what that deployment model looks like.
• Design the API contract between the GCS clients, the cloud backend and the dashboard frontend.
• Build the authentication and secure transport layer for device-to-cloud communication, including identity for non-human clients.
• Move us from uploading after each flight toward real-time streaming
• Operate what you build. We're a small team, so you'll be in the loop on production behaviour, not just shipping and walking away.

What We Are Looking For We're looking for a principal engineer who has spent enough time building cloud platforms that the design decisions feel familiar, but who still wants to be hands-on in the code. You're comfortable sitting between the engineers writing software on the drones and the engineers building what customers see, and you can hold a conversation in both directions. You're motivated by impact. You want to design something properly, build it, and operate it as it grows. You're at your best when the technical bar is high, and the responsibility is real, and you think about how your decisions translate into something customers can actually rely on in the field. You bring strong opinions to architectural conversations, but you hold them lightly enough to change your mind when someone else is right. We believe the right candidate brings

• 8+ years of engineering experience, with at least 4 of them building production backend services in public or private cloud.
• Real experience designing and operating ingestion or device-to-cloud systems. You've built something that took data in from clients you didn't fully control, and you can talk about what was hard.
• You treat infrastructure as code by default, with the same standards you'd apply to application code: reviewed, tested, versioned alongside the services it supports.
• Strong API design judgment. You can explain why you'd pick REST vs gRPC vs something else for a given problem, and you've had to evolve an API in production.
• Architectural ownership. You're the person on your current team who picks the cloud services, commits to a deployment model, and explains the choice to everyone else.
• Extensive experience with at least one of Go, Python, Rust, or similar, as a primary backend language. We haven't locked in our stack; that's one of the early calls this role will be part of shaping, but you should be deep in at least one of them and pragmatic about the choice.

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience in IoT, telemetry, fleet monitoring, drone or robotics platforms, or any other system where the clients sit in the field and the network is sometimes hostile.
• Background with Rust on the backend.
• Experience with streaming systems where you actually had a real-time requirement to justify them.
• Media streaming or video pipeline experience.

Why You Should Join At Six Robotics, we're not just building software; we're redefining how unmanned systems operate in the real world. If you're driven by meaningful problems, technical depth, and the chance to shape something from the ground up, you'll find your place here.

• Work on problems that matter

Our technology helps unlock smarter, safer, and more adaptable UAV operations in defense and industry, solving real challenges with direct, tangible impact.

• Lead the shift in a hardware-dominated space

We're bringing modern AI, autonomy, and scalable software into a field that's long relied on rigid, pre-programmed systems, to change how UAVs are designed, deployed, and managed.

• Build from zero, shape the future

Join early and help define the core systems, tools, and culture of a company that’s still being built - where your ideas, code, and decisions will have a lasting influence.

• Work with purpose, supported by great benefits You'll be part of a mission-driven team that values clarity, integrity, and collaboration, offering competitive pay, equity potential, strong insurance and pension plans, and ongoing learning opportunities.

Our Recruitment Process

• Screening interview with one of our recruiters to get to know you better (30 min).
• Meet & Greet with someone from the team to learn more about us (60 min).
• Programming assignment to be solved in your own time, followed by a technical interview more closely related to the specifics of the role (90 min).
• Final interview with our CTO and Head of People (45 min)

Reference check followed by an offer if everything goes well. We consider applications continuously, so don’t hold off with applying if this looks interesting. Our Commitment to Inclusion At Six Robotics, we are committed to creating a workplace built on respect, integrity, and collaboration. We value different perspectives and experiences, and we believe that diversity within our team strengthens both our work and our culture. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply and help us build technology that makes a real impact. Security Clearance Requirement All employees at Six Robotics are required to undergo a security clearance due to our close collaboration with the Norwegian Armed Forces. While prior clearance is not necessary, the clearance process will be initiated as part of onboarding.