We are looking for a product-driven software engineer to join our team as we scale our groundbreaking Wayfinder weather routing service for the maritime transport industry. This is a great opportunity for someone early in their career who is eager to learn, grow and make a real impact. In this position you will help design, develop, and maintain services in the Wayfinder Optimization Engine – an optimal ship-routing tool that combines weather data with ship performance models and user-specified constraints to find the most efficient routes across the worlds' oceans, saving fuel, emissions and reducing risk.
You’ll develop a deep understanding of our customers, their workflows, and critical data they need to operate. You will collaborate with a top-notch team of engineers, ocean scientists and product designers to translate these unique user needs into high quality software that helps users and saves carbon. You’ll spend a lot of time making internal workflows more efficient, improving core algorithms to drive top-line optimization metrics, and rolling out new features which delight our clients.
You’ll be primarily be working on our routing optimization system, which is written in Rust with some elements in Python. You should be comfortable working with both high- and low-level languages. You will be collaborating with engineers to deliver end-to-end features to users.
Deeply committed to building a product with a positive impact on the world
Passionate about the craft of software engineering. Loves making beautiful, functional interfaces for humans and maintainable, extendable interfaces for systems.
Curious and experimental in the face of rapid tech change like LLM’s
Enthusiastically leverages agentic programming techniques
Exposure to Rust, C++, C,or othercompiled, non-garbage-collected language
Clear communicator who enjoys collaborating with other engineers, designers, PMs, and scientists
Can rapidly acquire new technical skills and knowledge in a fast-paced, high-delivery environment
Excited to be be a part of a small but growing startup team
Understands the realities of startup life and is energized by the pace, ambiguity, and hands-on nature of a small but growing team.
Bonus Points:
Coursework or equivalent in optimization problems and controls systems
Coursework or equivalent background in physics
$100,000 - $139,000
The range listed is what we reasonably expect to pay for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and may be modified in the future. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, experience, and equity package.
We at Sofar Ocean acknowledge that careers in the marine sciences “... have traditionally been, and remain, non-diverse work environments”, thereby limiting the entry and prosperity of underrepresented groups in the space. (Johri et al., 2021) Many of these same groups are disproportionately affected by climate change, and are often excluded from decision-making that directly address their interests and needs.
We are committed to addressing these climate injustices and highly encourage people who identify as women, LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) to apply.
What We Do
Sofar connects the world's oceans to power a more sustainable future. Sofar unlocks ocean data at scale. We deployed hundreds of Spotters globally to create the world’s largest privately-owned network of ocean sensors that collects 1.5 million real-time observations daily. Our team of ocean scientists assimilates this real-time data into our marine weather forecasts, which are up to 50% more accurate than traditional models. In maritime shipping, we use these high-accuracy forecasts and vessel performance models to provide optimized guidance and save ships time, fuel, and emissions. We also equip researchers, operators, and innovators with our devices and data to power marine research and sustainable commercial solutions. Customers access data from our global sensor network and deploy our extensible Spotter platform to collect real-time surface and subsurface observations. Sofar’s team of engineers, ocean scientists, and business professionals is based in San Francisco, California.
