Senior Software Engineer, Elixir

Job description

Space is a warfighting domain. True Anomaly seeks those with the talent and ambition to build the technology that secures it. OUR MISSION True Anomaly delivers decisive capabilities for space superiority. We build autonomous spacecraft, advanced payloads, mission software, and space-based interceptors — enabling the U.S. and its Allies to secure the space environment and counter threats from the ultimate high ground. OUR VALUES - **Be the offset.** We create asymmetric advantages with creativity and ingenuity. - **What would it take?** We challenge assumptions to deliver ambitious results. - **It’s the people.** Our team is our competitive advantage and we are better together. YOUR MISSION Software is the central nervous system for True Anomaly's engineering and product thesis. Software bridges the gap between military objectives, theoretical astrodynamics and the human and autonomous control of spacecraft and ground systems in time and space. True Anomaly is seeking a dedicated Senior Elixir Software Engineer to drive the development and evolution of our distributed spacecraft ground control system. This is a high-autonomy, high-accountability role. You'll own entire service domains from conception to production, drive architectural decisions that affect the distributed systems powering our ground control infrastructure, and set the standard for code quality that junior and mid-level engineers will follow. You won't wait to be assigned work; you'll identify what needs to be done, propose solutions, and drive them to completion. When you see reliability issues, you'll diagnose root causes, scope the fix, and champion the work to address them. When patterns aren't serving us, you'll propose better ones and lead their adoption. You do not need to have experience building space ground systems or experience in aerospace. You'll have ownership of challenging, greenfield problems and a chance to fundamentally impact the outcome of future conflict (and the future of the company), all while enjoying world-class benefits including platinum healthcare, flexible work hours/location, highly competitive compensation and a generous stock options package. **RESPONSIBILITIES** - Own and deliver complex distributed system features end-to-end, from technical design through production deployment and iteration across satellite command and control, mission planning, mission data processing, and data analysis systems - Drive architectural direction for Elixir/OTP systems, establishing patterns and conventions for fault tolerance, concurrency, and scalability that scale across the team and codebase - Proactively identify and address technical debt, reliability risks, and performance bottlenecks in distributed systems - Set the quality bar through rigorous code review, championing testing practices, and writing code that serves as a reference implementation for the team - Mentor and elevate junior and mid-level engineers through pairing, design discussions, and constructive code review that teaches, not just approves - Collaborate as a technical partner with product, frontend engineers, backend engineers, space operators, and astrodynamics algorithm engineers, contributing to system-wide architectural decisions - Ship efficiently and iteratively, breaking complex distributed systems work into well-scoped increments while maintaining a bias toward completion over perfection - Document decisions and patterns, ensuring the team's collective knowledge grows and onboarding becomes easier over time **WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE IN THIS ROLE** - You see a PR from a junior engineer that works but misuses OTP patterns; you don't just approve it; you take the time to explain the supervision tree design and why it matters for fault tolerance - You notice a GenServer is becoming a bottleneck under load; you propose and implement a redesign using dynamic supervisors or process pooling, then document the pattern for the team - You're assigned a feature and the requirements are ambiguous; you proactively clarify with product and operations, propose a technical approach, and share it with the team before diving into implementation - You see downtime as an opportunity, not a break; you're the kind of engineer who notices the intermittent cluster synchronization issue everyone's been working around and decides to finally fix it - You disagree with an architectural decision; you articulate your concerns constructively, propose alternatives with tradeoffs, and commit fully once a decision is made - You're thinking beyond your current ticket; you're aware of how your work fits into the broader ground system architecture and operational mission, and you surface risks or opportunities early **QUALIFICATIONS** - 7+ years of software development experience - Expert-level command of Elixir and OTP, including deep understanding of BEAM internals, scheduling, process architecture, supervision strategies, and runtime characteristics - Deep expertise in designing and building resilient, fault-tolerant distributed systems, including advanced patterns for process supervision, clustering, and state management - Strong testing philosophy and hands-on experience with ExUnit, property-based testing, and integration testing strategies for distributed systems; you understand what to test, not just how - Proven experience designing and evolving service architectures, API boundaries, and inter-service communication patterns at scale - Fluency with gRPC, RESTful, and WebSocket-based services, including debugging integration issues and contributing to API design discussions - Comfort operating across the stack when needed; you can read frontend code, understand infrastructure constraints, and collaborate effectively with engineers across disciplines - Track record of working in Git-based workflows with high standards for commit hygiene, PR quality, and collaborative review processes - U.S. Citizen and eligible for DoD Secret or TS/SCI clearance **PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE** - Bachelor’s degree in computer science or similar discipline - Experience as a technical lead or primary backend on a product with real users and production constraints - Deep understanding of OTP including BEAM scheduling, GenServers, run queues, pg, the Actor model, and advanced patterns like dynamic supervisors, registries, and distributed process groups - Experience building and shipping complex, real-time systems with demanding reliability and performance requirements (real-time telemetry, large-scale data processing, mission-critical operations) - Experience with OAuth2, role-based access controls, and security patterns for sensitive systems ' - Deep database experience with PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, and operational concerns at scale - Experience with monitoring, observability, and distributed tracing in production systems (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana) - Strong collaboration and communication skills that let you thrive in a culture that values respectful, professional, and constructive conflict **COMPENSATION**