Staff Software Engineer (Cloud/Backend)

At D-Fend Solutions - now proudly part of the Motorola Solutions family - our people are our greatest strength, and technology is our passion. As the global leader in cyber-takeover counter-drone technology, we design and deliver advanced, software-defined solutions that empower our customers to detect, take control, and safely land unauthorized drones.

The Mission in Krakow

Following the acquisition, our Krakow MSI engineering center is partnering directly with the D-Fend group to drive a technological transformation: moving a critical configuration application to the Cloud. We are assembling an elite, highly agile team capable of diving deep into the existing solution, leveraging Motorola’s vast cloud expertise, and delivering high-impact results at startup speed. We’re seeking passionate, top-tier professionals who thrive in a fast-paced, creative, and collaborative environment. If you want to build cutting-edge airspace security innovation alongside the best engineers in the industry, this is your place.

Job Description

We are building a powerhouse Cloud/Platform team in Krakow, and we are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to be a part of this group. You will play a crucial role in architecting, implementing, maintaining, and scaling a massive multi-tenant SaaS distributed ecosystem, migrating on-premise components into a modern cloud architecture. You will partner closely with our Architecture team to shape the technical direction, acting as the ultimate subject matter expert (SME) for Node.js.

We are looking for a highly adaptable, heavyweight engineer who is "hot on code" and loves being deeply hands-on.

As a Staff Engineer in this elite team, you must be

• Highly Adaptable: Completely comfortable and highly effective in a rapidly changing, dynamic environment.
• A Fast Learner: Able to quickly absorb new domain knowledge and master new technologies on the fly.
• Decisive: Capable of making quick, pragmatic, and highly technical decisions without getting stuck in analysis paralysis.
• A Team Player: Ready to collaborate effectively with top-tier engineers, sharing knowledge, and driving collective success.
• A Technical Influencer: You elevate the team's engineering standards by example, providing technical guidance, prototyping architectural solutions, and acting as a sounding board for complex design decisions.

(Note: While this role is heavily focused on backend engineering and cloud infrastructure, we operate with a strict 'You Build It, You Run It' culture. End-to-end ownership is key, and you will occasionally dive into the frontend (React) to deliver complete features).

What You Will Do

• Drive the Cloud Transition:Play a hands-on role in designing, building and running multi-tenant SaaS applications designed specifically to take full advantage of cloud-native architecture.
• Architect & Build Distributed Systems: Tackle the most complex technical challenges and influence the design of high-throughput backend services and distributed systems, ensuring seamless data flow across Cloud, On-Premise, and Edge layers.
• Write Exceptional Code: Write sharp, scalable, and maintainable code. You will help set, evolve, and maintain the highest engineering standards and system design practices across the team.
• End-to-End Ownership: Take full ownership of your features - from technical design and backend coding to automated deployment and production monitoring.
• Collaborate & Accelerate: Work shoulder-to-shoulder with senior peers across MSI and D-Fend to leverage shared expertise, unblock technical challenges, and deliver results rapidly.

Basic Requirements

Requirements

• Experience & Mindset: 8+ years of backend engineering experience. You thrive in a dynamic environment, drive strategic technical decisions, and excel at collaborating with top-tier engineers.
• The Core Stack: Expertise in Node.js and TypeScript (including frameworks like NestJS or Express). You are highly hands-on and write extremely clean, scalable code.
• Cloud & Observability: Strong experience designing and building event-driven microservices in a major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP) and implementing modern Cloud Observability patterns (metrics, distributed tracing, structured logging).
• Data & Infrastructure: Solid proficiency with relational databases (PostgreSQL), in-memory caching (Redis), and containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• End-to-End Ownership: Practical experience with (or a strong willingness to touch) React to help the team deliver complete, end-to-end features when necessary.

Big Advantages (Bonus Points)

• Infrastructure as Code: Experience treating infrastructure as software using Terraform, AWS CDK, or Serverless Framework.
• AI Tooling: Experience enriching and optimizing development using dev-assisting GenAI tools (such as GitHub Copilot, Claude or Cursor).
• Security & ZTA: Knowledge of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and mTLS.
• Data Scale: Experience with time-series telemetry pipelines and long-term storage tiering.
• Observability: Experience implementing and utilizing observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog).
• System Design Excellence: Proven track record of actively contributing to system architecture, making high-level design choices, and solving hard distributed systems problems.