Junior Software Developer

07 Oct Junior Software Developer

About Black Swift Technologies

Black Swift Technologies builds unmanned aircraft systems for the most demanding flight environments on Earth. Founded in 2011 in Boulder, Colorado, and born out of research flying into tornadic supercell thunderstorms, BST designs its aircraft, avionics, autonomy software, payloads, and ground control systems entirely in house. That level of vertical integration lets a small, senior team field capabilities most organizations only prototype.

Our aircraft fly where nothing else can. Working with NOAA, our tube launched S0 deploys from Hurricane Hunter aircraft directly into the boundary layer of tropical cyclones, where it has captured the first continuous data and video from inside a Category 5 hurricane, measured winds above 220 mph in the eyewall, and now contributes data to NOAA’s operational hurricane forecast models. Our S2 has mapped gas vents on active volcanoes in Alaska and Costa Rica beyond visual line of sight, sampled wildfire plumes at night for fire weather research, and collected atmospheric measurements in the Arctic, with missions flown on all seven continents.

At the core of every aircraft is SwiftCore, our flight management system developed from the ground up rather than assembled around an off the shelf autopilot. SwiftCore is a fully modular avionics architecture of networked nodes on a robust bus, spanning flight control, communications, payload interfaces, and ground software, and its sensor reactive autonomy lets the aircraft adapt its own flight path in real time to what it measures. Owning the entire stack is why our systems survive conditions that ground everyone else, and why our engineers can innovate at any layer of the aircraft.

BST is now scaling from a research driven engineering firm into a production supplier of autonomous aircraft for environmental sensing and defense missions, expanding our platform family with the S3, building toward NDAA compliant sourcing and Blue UAS listing, and growing rapidly with the backing of our strategic partner KrateoSky.

Position Summary

You will build and maintain the application surfaces that operators, internal teams, and customers actually use. This is a junior software developer role with a front-end specialty: someone who can turn telemetry, payload outputs, mission data, uploads, customer access flows, and operational friction into software that is fast, usable, reliable, and worth shipping. You will work on interfaces such as SwiftWeb and adjacent user-facing tools that translate complex flight and payload data into clear, actionable workflows. A strong UX head matters here because the hard part is not merely producing code—it is deciding what belongs in front of the user, how workflows should feel, and how complex operational information becomes obvious rather than noisy.

This role sits at the intersection of Black Swift application needs and the broader aircraft software stack. Your operational priorities will come from the software and product reality on the ground—what users need, what the team is trying to ship, what workflows are too fragile, too manual, or too confusing. You will work in an engineering environment that expects rapid iteration, strong ownership, disciplined use of modern development tools, and a willingness to work across interface logic, API integration, data flows, UX refinement, and backend or workflow implementation whenever the fastest path to a working product requires it.

Junior but high-agency IC role: We are not looking for someone who waits for perfect requirements, pixel-perfect handoffs, or a manager to decompose every problem into a ticket tree. We are looking for a builder early in their career who has real upside: someone who can take a messy operational need, ask sharp questions, reduce it to fundamentals, and build an interface or workflow that actually solves the problem. Strong judgment, curiosity, and pace matter here as much as years.

Key Responsibilities

• User-Facing Application Development: Build and maintain web interfaces and application workflows used by operators, internal teams, and customers to access mission data, upload files, manage information, and interact with Black Swift software products.
• SwiftWeb and Front-End Feature Delivery: Implement and refine features across SwiftWeb and related user-facing surfaces, ensuring that the software is clear, dependable, and useful under real operational pressure rather than merely visually attractive.
• API and Data Integration: Connect front-end systems to back-end services, authentication flows, telemetry feeds, customer-access pathways, and operational data sources with clean contracts and robust failure handling.
• Data-Heavy and Geospatial UI Work: Build interfaces that can handle dense information, large uploads, visualization-heavy workflows, and—where required—maps, flight traces, geospatial overlays, or sensor-driven data displays.
• Full-Stack Delivery Bias: Even though this role has a front-end specialty, you are expected to cross the stack when needed—writing backend handlers, service glue, workflow automations, or integration code when that is the fastest way to ship a working product.
• AI-Assisted Engineering with Verification: Use LLM-assisted development where appropriate for non-critical code generation, testing, refactoring, documentation, and debugging. Review and validate generated output rigorously, and do not delegate safety-critical reasoning or unverified behavior in aircraft-related or operational systems to an AI system.
• Usability, Performance, and Reliability: Improve responsiveness, interaction quality, error handling, browser behavior, and workflow clarity so that the software is trustworthy for both internal teams and external users.
• Testing and Engineering Discipline: Contribute unit tests, end-to-end checks, regression thinking, and general software hygiene so that fast delivery does not degrade the application layer over time.
• Reusable Interface Patterns: Help establish reusable components, design patterns, and implementation standards that make the application stack easier to extend, maintain, and integrate as the broader platform scales.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with software, operations, business development, and technical leadership to translate ambiguous operational needs into software that actually gets adopted and used.

Required Qualifications

• Engineer I Level Delivery: Typically 0–2 years of relevant experience, or equivalent demonstrated capability, in software engineering, front-end application development, product-facing tooling, or adjacent disciplines.
• Demonstrated Builder Ability: You have built working software—through professional work, internships, serious side projects, open-source contributions, coursework, or equivalent—that shows you can turn requirements into real interfaces and systems rather than simply assemble tutorials.
• Self-Directed Learning: You have demonstrated that you can independently learn new technologies and concepts, adapt to unfamiliar codebases, and make progress without requiring every task to be decomposed for you.
• Framework-Agnostic Front-End Fundamentals: Strong understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript or TypeScript, the DOM, responsive design, browser behavior, and component-based application concepts. You learn the underlying principles and can become productive across frameworks rather than depending on a single framework or tool.
• API and Integration Capability: Direct experience consuming APIs, handling asynchronous data, managing state, and building interfaces that reflect real back-end behavior rather than static mocks.
• Strong UX Head: You have unusually good judgment for what should be on the screen, what should be hidden, how users should move through a workflow, and how information density should be managed. You notice when workflows are confusing, brittle, or visually noisy and you know how to improve them.
• Software Engineering Discipline: Sound habits around version control, testing, debugging, code quality, and incremental delivery. We do not need a pure designer; we need an engineer who ships responsibly.
• POSIX-Style Environment Experience or Interest: Comfortable, or eager to become comfortable, working in a Unix-like setting: navigating the shell, using standard command-line tools, scripting, understanding processes and file permissions, and making the terminal a natural part of your workflow.
• AI-Assisted Development and Verification: Familiarity with using LLM-assisted coding for tasks such as non-critical code generation, testing, debugging, refactoring, component scaffolding, and documentation. You can critically evaluate generated output, identify incorrect assumptions, and apply sound engineering judgment before code reaches aircraft-related or operational systems.
• An Interest in Aerospace: You’re excited about the intersection of software and flight, and the prospect of your work contributing to real-world aviation applications motivates you.
• Export Control Requirements: This position must meet U.S. export control compliance requirements. To meet U.S. export control compliance requirements, a “U.S. Person” as defined by 22 C.F.R. §120.62 is required. “U.S. Person” includes U.S. Citizen, U.S. National, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with data-heavy, geospatial, mapping, or visualization-rich applications.
• Familiarity with telemetry, sensor data, robotics, or other operational software domains where interfaces must make complex information usable.
• Comfort extending beyond the browser into backend, workflow automation, or integration work when the fastest path to delivery requires it.
• Experience with Python, serverless functions, workflow tooling, or other pragmatic backend-adjacent development that helps close application delivery loops (with familiarity in additional application or systems languages such as C++, Go, or Java a plus).

Logistics

• Department: Software Applications / Engineering
• Location: Boulder, CO (in-person)
• Reports To: Ben Busy (Lead software engineer)
• Compensation: $75,000 – $95,000 / year (targeted base; total package includes comprehensive benefits)