Developer Experience Engineer – NODA AI

Location: Austin, TX (Hybrid — minimum 3 days/week on-site preferred)
Travel: 10% or less
Clearance: U.S. Citizen with the ability and willingness to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance (sponsorship available)

About NODA

NODA is a veteran-owned, venture-backed technology company transforming how unmanned systems collaborate in complex, mission-critical environments. Our distributed orchestration platform enables autonomous coordination of heterogeneous unmanned systems across air, sea, land, and space with vital applications in defense, intelligence, and commercial sectors.

Developer Experience at NODA is not a support function — it is a force multiplier. We build the internal tooling, build systems, release automation, SDK workflows, and self-service developer surfaces that allow engineers to move from idea to validated artifact quickly and reliably.

The Role

As a Developer Experience Engineer, you will own the engineering systems that make NODA developers productive.

You will improve the full developer lifecycle: local development, GitHub workflows, CI/CD, build optimization, test feedback, release automation, SDK packaging, documentation, and first-run experience.

This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who treats developer productivity as a systems problem. You will own the path from:

git push → validated build → packaged SDK → usable developer workflow

You will work closely with autonomy, simulation, platform, and field engineering teams to reduce friction and create fast, reliable, and reproducible workflows for both connected and constrained deployment environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Own GitHub-based engineering workflows, including PR validation, CI triggers, quality gates, and release automation.

• Improve engineering feedback loops, build reliability, and deployment confidence across local and CI environments.

• Own the developer-facing SDK and CLI experience, including install flow, CLI ergonomics, Python package usability, examples, quickstarts, and release quality.

• Eliminate workflow friction and reduce dependency on tribal knowledge through automation and self-service tooling.

• Build and maintain reproducible, secure, and air-gapped developer and release workflows.

• Use metrics and developer feedback to continuously improve engineering workflows and platform adoption.

• Partner across autonomy, simulation, systems, and field engineering teams to ensure workflows reflect real operational needs.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in Developer Experience, platform engineering, build/release engineering, infrastructure engineering, or software engineering focused on internal tools.

• Strong hands-on experience with CI/CD systems and automated release workflows.

• Experience designing and optimizing build, test, and release pipelines.

• Strong Python skills for tooling, automation, SDKs, or packaging.

• Experience owning SDKs, CLIs, or developer-facing platforms.

• Strong systems debugging skills across code, infrastructure, CI, packaging, and developer environments.

• Experience with containers and reproducible development environments.

• U.S. Citizenship with the ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with air-gapped, classified, CUI, or restricted-network deployment patterns.

• Experience supporting autonomy, robotics, simulation, edge, embedded, or defense-adjacent software workflows.

• Experience owning SDKs, CLIs, Python packages, or developer-facing platforms.

• Experience with Python packaging and distribution, including PyPI, containers, or offline bundles.

• Experience with cloud-backed build infrastructure, including AWS EC2, self-hosted runners, or ephemeral environments.

• Experience improving build performance in complex multi-language or systems-heavy codebases.

• Familiarity with distributed messaging systems such as Zenoh, DDS, MQTT, or similar.

Skills & Attributes

• Product-minded: treats developers as users and internal platforms as products.

• Systems-oriented: understands the full path from local development to release artifact.

• Pragmatic builder: improves workflows without adding unnecessary process.

• High ownership: identifies bottlenecks, fixes them, and measures the result.

• Developer empathy: understands friction because they have built and shipped software themselves.

• Clear communicator: can document workflows, explain tradeoffs, and drive adoption across engineering teams.

• Security-aware: understands the requirements of defense and controlled deployment environments.

• AI-fluent: uses AI tools pragmatically to accelerate engineering workflows while maintaining strong engineering judgment and verification discipline.

Benefits & Perks

Our culture fosters collaboration, respect, and trust, empowering passionate people to do their best work. We offer a competitive salary, comprehensive benefits, and opportunities for career growth. In addition to an opportunity to take part in an innovative, collaborative and fast-growing business with a highly motivated and skilled team, we also take pride in taking care of our employees. Here are just a few ways that we show our appreciation:

• We offer comprehensive medical, dental, and visions plans

• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan to invest in your long-term retirement goals + Company match

• Equity grants for new hires

• Unlimited PTO

• 11 Paid holidays

• Extremely generous company holiday calendar, including a holiday hiatus in November, & December.

• Generous Parental Leave

• Military Leave for annual training or service requirements

• FSA

• DCFSA

• HSA

• Professional Development Opportunities

• Access to One Medical

• Mental Health Resources: We provide free mental health resources 24/7 including therapy and more. Additional work-life services, such as free legal and financial support, are available to you as well.

Growth Path at NODA

Developer Experience Engineer → Senior Developer Experience Engineer → Staff Engineer, Developer Platform → Principal Engineer, Developer Platform

Export Control Compliance

To conform to U.S. government export control regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR), you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or otherwise eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State or U.S. Department of Commerce.

Equal Opportunity Statement

NODA AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and respectful workplace and to maintaining equitable employment and hiring practices. We provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees and make all employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

As a federal contractor, NODA AI complies with all applicable equal employment opportunity and affirmative action requirements, including Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, and the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 (VEVRAA), as amended. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants and employees with disabilities throughout the recruiting, hiring, and employment process.

Consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws, qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with applicable fair chance and ban-the-box laws, including the Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance where applicable. We actively encourage qualified individuals of all backgrounds, including women, minorities, protected veterans, and individuals with disabilities, to apply.

NODA AI is committed to fostering an inclusive, supportive, and accessible work environment for all applicants and employees. If you require accommodations or assistance during the application process, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected] or contact your recruiter so we can provide the support you need.