Backend Geospatial Software Engineer

Chesapeake Technology, Inc. | Remote — US

About Chesapeake Technology

Chesapeake Technology is a 25-year leader in marine survey software, developing SonarWiz — the industry-standard platform for processing sidescan sonar, sub-bottom profiler, bathymetry, and magnetometer data. We serve commercial survey companies, research institutions, government agencies, and defense customers worldwide. We are currently building a next-generation cloud-native platform that brings AI/ML-powered processing to the browser, along with edge computing capabilities for real-time AUV data analysis.

The Role

We're looking for a Backend Geospatial Software Engineer to architect and build the cloud processing engine powering our new platform. You'll work on large-scale geospatial data pipelines — ingesting, transforming, and serving sonar and bathymetric datasets — using modern Python-based scientific computing tools on AWS. You'll also help design lightweight edge processing solutions that run onboard autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for real-time sensor analysis and decision-making. High-impact role on a small, focused team where your work ships directly to production.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement scalable backend services for cloud-based geospatial data processing

• Build distributed data pipelines using Dask and Xarray to process large multi-dimensional sonar datasets

• Architect and optimize AWS infrastructure (S3, Lambda, ECS/EKS, Step Functions, SQS) for compute-intensive workloads

• Develop edge computing pipelines for onboard AUV data analysis, enabling real-time target detection and adaptive survey planning

• Design systems that bridge edge and cloud — syncing, validating, and enriching AUV-collected data post-mission

• Develop APIs that serve processed geospatial data to the web-based frontend

• Integrate ML/AI models for automated bottom tracking, target recognition, and data classification

• Optimize data storage, compression, and retrieval for large raster and point-cloud datasets

• Contribute to infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD pipelines

What We're Looking For

Required

• 3+ years of backend software engineering experience with Python

• Strong hands-on experience with AWS (S3, EC2/ECS, Lambda, Step Functions, or equivalent orchestration)

• Production experience with Dask for distributed/parallel computing

• Production experience with Xarray for multi-dimensional array data

• Solid understanding of geospatial data formats and CRS (GeoTIFF, NetCDF, shapefiles, WGS84, UTM)

• Experience building RESTful or GraphQL APIs

• Comfort with containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes)

Preferred

• Experience with edge computing or embedded processing on resource-constrained platforms (ARM, NVIDIA Jetson, or similar)

• Familiarity with AUV/UUV systems, robotics middleware (ROS/ROS2), or real-time sensor data processing

• Experience with marine survey, hydrographic, or oceanographic data

• Familiarity with sonar data processing (sidescan, multibeam, sub-bottom profiler)

• Experience with GDAL/OGR, Rasterio, or similar geospatial libraries

• Background in scientific computing or numerical methods

• Experience with ML/AI pipelines (TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar), including model optimization for edge deployment

• Familiarity with Zarr, Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG), or other cloud-native data formats

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK)

• Active or ability to obtain a U.S. security clearance

Why Chesapeake

• High impact — your code processes real-world ocean data used by navies, researchers, and survey companies worldwide

• Cloud + edge — work across the full spectrum, from scalable cloud infrastructure to real-time processing onboard AUVs

• Greenfield platform — built from the ground up with modern tools, no legacy constraints

• Small team, big ownership — direct influence on architecture decisions and product direction

• Domain expertise — 25 years of sonar processing knowledge; you'll learn a fascinating domain

• Flexible work — fully remote within the US with a collaborative, low-bureaucracy culture

Compensation & Benefits

Competitive salary commensurate with experience. Benefits include health insurance, flexible PTO, and professional development opportunities.