Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer, EarthRangerContract OpportunityWho You Are:Love animals? Have you always wanted to apply your technical and creative expertise to a product that protects endangered species on a day-to-day basis? You don’t have to decide between a technical career and a deeply moving, important calling. Imagine your cutting-edge software being used by a wildlife ranger in Africa, helping them to combat poaching, study animals, and help local communities!Your Next Challenge:The Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) is looking for our next Staff Software Engineer to help drive our Applied Science & Technology team’s EarthRanger project. EarthRanger is a software platform that empowers conservationists to make informed operational decisions by integrating data from many sources to create a holistic view of their protected area. Our solution helps prevent endangered species poaching, combat deforestation, promote human-wildlife coexistence, and advocate for legal wildlife protection. Used by over 700 conservation organizations worldwide—from iconic national parks like Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya and North Luangwa National Park in Zambia to species-specific programs like the Snow Leopard Trust in Mongolia and Panthera’s Mountain Lion Program in Washington state—EarthRanger is making a global impact.We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer who can operate broadly across the EarthRanger platform and take on whichever hard problem matters most at the time. A major near-term focus is a ground-up rewrite of our permissions and authorization model—reshaping how access is governed and how data is securely shared across tenants and partner organizations, a foundational capability as more conservation organizations collaborate on our platform. Another is processing, storing, and retrieving large volumes of IoT data for analysis—designing scalable systems that handle real-time data streams from diverse sources such as animal trackers, radios, vehicles, rangers, patrols, and remote imaging devices, ingesting and analyzing data from over 100 hardware sensors so conservationists can make informed operational decisions. The ideal candidate is comfortable moving between challenges like these and architecting solutions that hold up as the platform grows. We build with modern AI-assisted engineering tools—coding agents and agentic workflows are part of how we work every day—and we're looking for someone who uses them fluently to raise both the pace and the quality of what we ship.What You’ll Need:The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required to help us make a difference.Ability to architect scalable solutions including design documents and lead the implementation of that system by their team—across domains ranging from authorization and permission systems that govern how data is shared across tenants and organizations to near real-time data streaming from remote sensors.Technical innovator and thought leader, with ability to demonstrate and inspire continuous learning, experimentation, and data and metrics-driven decision makingHands-on daily use of modern AI-assisted development tooling (e.g. Claude Code, coding agents, agentic workflows) to move faster and raise quality—and the judgment to know where to apply it, review its output critically, and help the team adopt these practices well.Architect and enforce best practices for unit testing and CI/CD to support scalable, reliable delivery of web, service, database, and mobile platforms.Broad architectural expertise spanning multiple technology domains, from designing web service interfaces to engineering scalable backend systems and the integration layers that connect them.Anticipates obstacles and performance risks early, formulating and implementing strategies to mitigate issues and maintain delivery momentum.Must be delivery focused, with a strong willingness to perform all tasks required to complete the job and meet deadlines.Preferred:Experienced coder in Python with over 6 years experience developing applications and services in that language. Version 3.10 and above.Proven track record of architecting and delivering scalable SaaS solutions built with Django, utilizing data stores such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, and Elasticsearch. Skilled in designing multi-tenant systems and orchestrating deployments on Kubernetes for high availability and performance.Expertise in designing and implementing RESTful APIs for complex systems using Django REST Framework, with additional experience developing real-time communication interfaces through WebSockets or Socket.IO.Architect real-time systems leveraging Celery, Pub/Sub, or similar technologies to implement distributed background processing and message queues for seamless cross-system communication.Demonstrated expertise in end-to-end application security, ensuring protection from data at rest to data in transit, and safeguarding all public-facing interfaces.Experience designing authorization and permission models (e.g. RBAC/ABAC, fine-grained access control) and reasoning about secure data sharing and isolation in multi-tenant systems.Experience delivering solutions on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. Google Cloud preferred.Track record of establishing AI-assisted engineering practices on a team—evaluating tools, defining sensible guardrails for code review and testing, and improving team throughput without compromising the production bar.Education/experience:Established track record of delivering complex software solutions to delight customersBachelor's degree and/or Master's degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experienceA minimum of 12 years of software development experienceFor more details, please contact careers@earthranger.com with CV and cover letter.