Senior Software Engineer

Location: Dogpatch Labs, Dublin. Hybrid — typically 2–3 days a week on-site, with a rhythm we agree together.

About IONA

IONA is building the infrastructure that makes the low sky useful. We enable safe, reliable, everyday drone operations that move people, goods and information faster than ground-based systems allow.

We design the aircraft, the software and the operating model that makes large-scale aerial operations possible. Our goal is simple: turn drones into a dependable part of national infrastructure.

Joining IONA means joining a team that moves fast, solves real problems and builds things that work in the world, not just on paper.

Role purpose

This is a senior engineering role on the platform that runs IONA's drone operations. You join a team with established conventions, a real review culture and a stack we are happy to defend. You come in as a strong IC, ship alongside the team from week one, and grow into owning larger pieces of the platform as you build context and trust.

The role covers two connected areas of the platform. You will work across both — but we expect candidates to have a stronger background in at least one of them.

Cloud platform (portal and services)

The operator-facing side of the platform — the web portal that pilots, dispatchers and operations leads use to plan missions, monitor flights, manage fleets and respond to incidents, plus the cloud services that back it.

This area is centred on web and cloud engineering, on operator UX under time pressure, and on holding the line on safety-critical API and data design.

Edge compute

The software running on the drone, the telemetry and command pipeline that connects it to the cloud, and the cloud-side services that close the loop — device enrollment, telemetry ingest, real-time fan-out and mission execution.

This area straddles hardware and cloud. The systems here have to keep working when the network is bad, the power is unreliable and the consequences of a bug are physical.

Our stack at a glance

So you can decide if this is the kind of work you want to do:

• Backend: Service Oriented Architecture, Go services, PostgreSQL, Spanner, hexagonal / DDD style boundaries, REST APIs with OpenAPI.
• Frontend: SvelteKit and Svelte 5 (TypeScript), with real-time map and telemetry surfaces.
• Cloud: GCP — Cloud Run, Compute Engine, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, GCS, internal load balancing etc...
• Infra and delivery: Terraform, Docker, GitHub Actions, Workload Identity Federation, environment-based promotion from dev to staging to production.
• Edge compute: NixOS on our on-aircraft hardware; integration with flight control over MAVLink and DroneCAN.
• Auth and access: OIDC and JWT with role-based access control, multi-tenant isolation.

You do not need every one of these to apply. We care more about depth in the relevant area and the ability to ramp up into the rest.

The work

You are joining a team that already has its conventions, its review culture and a platform we are happy to defend. The job is to make it stronger, not to remake it.

Your first months are spent contributing as a strong IC — shipping real work alongside engineers who know the codebase, learning the platform by building in it, and bringing your taste to design and code reviews. As you build context and trust, you take on the design of larger pieces of the platform and become the engineer the team leans on for the harder calls in your area. We are a startup, so the path from senior IC to system owner is short — when it lands, it lands properly, and on real evidence.

Day-to-day, across both areas

• Ship real features, services and fixes alongside engineers who already know the codebase.
• Bring your judgement to design reviews, code reviews and incident discussions — disagree well, and sharpen the bar where it can go higher.
• Partner with flight control, hardware, operations and regulatory teams; listen to their constraints and translate them into systems that hold up in the real world.
• Help the engineers around you level up through pairing and review.

Cloud platform

• Build across the operator-facing web portal and the Go services that back it.
• Work on real-time map and telemetry surfaces, mission planning flows, fleet management and incident response.
• Help us evolve data ownership across services as the platform grows.
• Improve testing, observability and release confidence in the areas you work on.

Edge compute

• Build on the on-aircraft software and the pipeline that connects it to the cloud.
• Maintain & develop the companion computer and its operating system, enabling telemetry, command and control and a lot more over the air.
• Work on telemetry capture and upload, command and control, device identity and mission execution.
• Design for intermittent connectivity, constrained hardware and real failure modes — not the happy path.
• Improve how we test and observe a system we cannot physically reach.

About you

Experience and skills

• 7+ years building production software, ideally in safety-critical, regulated, real-time or large-scale infrastructure domains.
• Demonstrated ownership of a non-trivial system end-to-end — design, build, ship, evolve.
• Strong backend engineering in Go (or strong systems-language experience and willingness to work in Go) with clear service-oriented architecture instincts: API contracts, versioning, schema migration discipline, sensible data ownership across services.
• Comfortable with Linux, Terraform, GCP (or another major cloud at depth), CI/CD pipelines and observability tooling.
• Strong SQL with PostgreSQL; comfortable reasoning about data ownership across multiple services.
• Track record of mentoring or technically leading a small group of engineers — design reviews, code reviews, raising the bar without slowing the team down.
• Confident producing clean, testable, well-documented code; comfortable being the engineer the team trusts to make the call when the spec is ambiguous.

Strengths in one of the two key areas

We expect a senior background in at least one of:

• Cloud platform: strong backend engineering in Go (or a comparable systems language, ready to work in Go) with real service-oriented architecture chops — API design, versioning, schema and data-ownership across multiple services, observability, release discipline. Paired with credible modern frontend work in Svelte, React or equivalent (component systems, testing, accessibility, real-time data and map surfaces) so you can move across the full operator-facing slice.
• Edge compute: strong backend and systems engineering for constrained, networked devices — service design under intermittent connectivity, tight resource budgets and real hardware failure modes, plus the architecture of the link back to cloud (telemetry pipelines, device identity, command and control). Reproducible Linux images at depth (NixOS preferred, Yocto / buildroot or equivalent welcome). Drone or robotics exposure (MAVLink, ArduPilot or PX4, ROS, DroneCAN, CAN bus or equivalent real-time protocols) is a strong plus.

You do not need to arrive senior in both. You do need to be ready to work across both, with the curiosity and ability to learn the side you know less well.

Nice to have

• Experience with EASA, FAA, IAA or comparable aviation regulation, or U-space.
• Experience with OIDC, JWT and role-based access control at scale.
• Experience with an L7 API gateway, telemetry or time-series at scale, real-time fan-out, or message streaming.
• Experience setting up a team's hiring loop, design-review process or technical-quality practice.

How you work

• Make it happen. You take ownership end-to-end and solve problems without waiting for perfect instructions. You ship.
• Clarity builds speed. You write clear APIs, design docs and reviews that reduce noise across the team.
• Solve what matters. Reliability, scalability and operational clarity beat clever abstractions.
• Speak up, then commit. You challenge assumptions, contribute to direction, then move with the team — even when the decision did not go your way.
• Safety is a property of the system, not a feature. You design for the bad day, not the demo.

Scope of seniority

What we mean by senior, concretely:

• You have been the named owner of a production system for at least 12 months — its design, its incidents, its evolution.
• You have shipped at least one project that crossed two or more services, teams or disciplines, and you held the design together.
• You write design docs that get used as the source of truth in reviews, not as a formality.
• You have made a call on a contentious technical decision, written it up, and lived with the consequences.
• You have been the reviewer that mid-level engineers actively want on their PRs.

Not required: a senior title at your current company. We hire on evidence, not labels.

The offer

• Senior-band compensation with meaningful equity in a company building physical infrastructure, not just another SaaS feature.
• Hybrid in Dogpatch Labs, Dublin — 2–3 days a week with the team, rest of the week on the rhythm that works for you.
• Direct line of sight from your code to the aircraft and the operators flying it.
• A small team that takes engineering quality seriously and pushes back hard on the easy way out.
• We care about your growth: a learning-platform account and time to upskill or pursue industry-recognised certifications in areas you care about.