Senior Software Engineer

Sofar Ocean is a ocean intelligence company that operates the largest privately-owned ocean sensor network in the world, delivering real-time data and analytics to maritime, government, defense, and research customers. Their two core platforms are Spotter, a global network of solar-powered buoys and sensing devices that measure waves, wind, weather, sound, currents, temperature, water quality, and water level, and Wayfinder, a voyage optimization software that helps shipping operators reduce fuel consumption and emissions by recommending optimal routes, speeds, and schedules based on live maritime weather data and vessel performance models. The company generates over 1.5 million real-time ocean observations per day from more than 2,500 deployed Spotters worldwide, providing ground-truth data trusted by NOAA, the U.S. Navy, and major commercial shipping fleets. Sofar Ocean's mission is centered on building a comprehensive data layer for the ocean to improve safety, efficiency, and environmental stewardship across maritime industries. Their Wayfinder platform delivers an average fuel reduction of 4 to 8 percent per voyage, directly translating into lower greenhouse gas emissions for commercial shipping, one of the world's largest industrial carbon emitters. By combining proprietary sensor infrastructure with advanced weather modeling, Sofar claims forecasts that are 50 percent more accurate than traditional models, enabling better preparation for extreme weather events and protection of maritime assets. What distinguishes Sofar Ocean is its vertically integrated approach: the company owns and operates its own sensor network, runs its own intelligence models, and delivers end-to-end solutions from raw ocean data collection to actionable voyage guidance. This positions them uniquely at the intersection of climate resilience, maritime efficiency, and ocean science, serving a diverse customer base that includes shipping companies, governments, coral reef researchers, and defense agencies seeking live, hyperlocal ocean intelligence at a global scale.

The Role

You will be a key contributor to frontend and backend engineering on cloud software systems on the Spotter team, which is a highly cross-functional group that designs our sensing systems and the applications that connect them. You’ll work alongside other software engineers and collaborate directly with hardware and firmware engineers to build features in applications like spotter.sofarocean.com and APIs (see docs.sofarocean.com) that interact with our hardware products: Spotter, Smart Mooring, next generation platforms, and Sofar’s open hardware connectivity stack Bristlemouth www.bristlemouth.org.

You thrive in small and collaborative multidisciplinary teams, and love learning something new and surprising every day. You strive for the shared success of improving the health of our oceans and planet by shipping a cohesive, performant and impactful product.

You’re a full-stack engineer with experience developing frontend and backend elements of modern web applications. Our tech stack includes React on the frontend with backend APIs written using Typescript, Express, and Postgres. You will own features across the stack and should be comfortable architecting solutions from the data storage layer to UIs.

This role will be working onsite at our Pier 28 office at least 3 days per week and reporting to our Senior Engineering Manager.

Recent Team Stories

We had a particular user account with rapidly increasing numbers of deployed hydrophones, reporting data more and more frequently, with many users concurrently opening the dashboard that displays complex visualizations of this real-time streaming dynamic data, so that the load on the backend system was compounding exponentially. We’re proud of some intense, fun, and successful performance testing work we did, with solutions that spanned React component data invalidation, multiple layers of caching, database index optimization, and remotely configurable thresholds on the hardware systems.

We're currently automating some processes for configuring and updating a wide range of remote hardware devices in order to make it easier for users to manage their systems safely without contacting support. One part of the challenge is documenting the giant unwritten decision tree that has only ever been performed by our very smart and deeply knowledgeable colleagues. We all continue to surprise each other by bringing up yet another caveat or edge case that we have to account for in software.

Fun Stuff

• Gorgeous Pier 28 office where we test systems in San Francisco Bay

• Lunch provided 3 days a week

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance

• Flexible PTO, plus one company-wide office closure week

About You

• Passionate about building a product with a positive impact on the world

• Product engineer mindset with deep customer empathy and strong opinions

• Comfortable owning a feature end-to-end with minimal spec

• A clear and empathetic communicator who enjoys collaborating with other engineers, designers, product managers, and scientists

• Rapidly acquire new technical skills and knowledge in a fast-paced, high-delivery environment

• Mentor others in an open, respectful, empathetic manner, including through thoughtful code reviews

• Excited to join a 100-person growing startup

Minimum Job Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software development experience in modern cloud environments

• Significant professional experience with Typescript, React, & Postgres

• Owned the full lifecycle of features from conception and architecture, through development and testing, release with CI/CD, monitoring and alerting, to maintenance and optimization

Bonus Points

• You love the ocean and have a connection to it that you could strengthen by joining Sofar

• Significant expertise with deployments spanning several AWS services like ECS, ALB, CloudFront, RDS, ElastiCache, Lambda, IAM, and more

• Complex data visualization experience (circular wave energy, hydrophone spectrogram)

• Acoustics expertise or knowledge about sonic propagation in dynamic ocean environments

• Have worked directly with hardware or firmware colleagues

Estimated Salary Range

• $140,000-$179,000 + stock options

• 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.