Software Engineer, Mission & Real-Time Systems

Mirai is building the first AI‑driven autonomy platform for vessels under 100 ft, combining advanced robotics, sensor fusion, and onboard intelligence to make every boat autonomous, safer, and dramatically easier to operate. Beyond enabling crewed vessels, Mirai also develops next‑generation Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) — uncrewed platforms designed for exploration, utility missions, and operational support — all powered by the same Operating System and multi‑layer autonomy framework.

Imagine orchestrating a fleet of autonomous vessels running complex, coordinated missions across open water — no crew, no manual override, just the intelligence you built making decisions in real time. Multiple robots, multiple objectives, degraded comms, dynamic conditions. The backend that makes that possible doesn't exist yet. You'd be building it.

We are seeking a hands‑on developer to join our mission systems team. In this role, you will spend most of your time writing code — designing and building the server‑side infrastructure that connects our autonomous vehicles to the operators who command them: real‑time telemetry pipelines, mission planning and tasking backends, command and control services, and the APIs that tie the entire stack together.

This is not a CRUD application, and this is not an architecture role. The systems you build run on vessels operating at sea, in degraded network conditions, where latency costs missions and downtime is not an option. You will own what you ship, end to end.

We are looking for the kind of developer who treats AI‑assisted development as a core competency — Cursor, Copilot, Claude, whatever gets the job done — and uses it to ship robust, production‑grade software faster than anyone around them. At Mirai, AI‑augmented development is not a bonus skill. It is how we build.

Key Responsibilities

Real‑Time Communications

Design and implement low‑latency communication layers between autonomous vehicles and ground systems using WebSocket, MQTT, gRPC, and similar protocols.

Build robust message delivery and fault‑tolerance mechanisms that hold up under intermittent connectivity and bandwidth constraints typical of maritime environments.

Mission Planning & Command and Control

Build backend services for mission planning, tasking, and real‑time vehicle command across multiple concurrent autonomous platforms.

Develop the logic that translates operator intent into actionable instructions for the autonomy stack.

Data Pipelines & Telemetry

Architect and maintain high‑throughput ingestion pipelines for sensor telemetry, vehicle state, and mission data streaming from vessels in the field.

Design storage and retrieval systems optimized for time‑series and geospatial data.

API Design & Systems Integration

Define and maintain clean, versioned APIs for integration with HMI layers, internal services, and external platforms.

Own the contract between backend services and the rest of the Mirai stack — robotics middleware, mission display, data archive.

Required Qualifications

Being the kind of engineer who has already integrated AI tools into their daily development workflow — Cursor, Copilot, Claude, or whatever gets the job done — and considers this a professional baseline, not an experiment.

2–4 years of professional experience in backend or full‑stack software engineering.

Strong proficiency in at least one server‑side language (Python, Go, Rust, or equivalent) and the pragmatism to pick the right one for the problem.

Hands‑on experience with real‑time communication protocols (WebSocket, MQTT, gRPC, or similar).

Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals — fault tolerance, consistency trade‑offs, service reliability.

Experience designing and documenting APIs consumed across multiple clients and teams.

EU passport (or unrestricted right to work in Italy). This role supports hybrid work.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with time‑series databases (InfluxDB, TimescaleDB) or geospatial data systems (PostGIS, similar).

Familiarity with robotics middleware — ROS2, MAVLink, or similar protocols — or prior exposure to autonomous systems, UAV, or maritime platforms.

Experience working with edge systems or constrained‑bandwidth environments.

Solid CI/CD practices, containerization, and cloud‑native infrastructure experience.

Open‑source contributions or a personal technical portfolio that shows how you actually build things.

What we offer

Work on the most advanced autonomous maritime platform in Europe.

Direct ownership of mission‑critical backend infrastructure — systems that operate on real vessels, in real conditions.

Fast engineering culture where AI‑augmented development is the norm, not the exception.

Hybrid role with flexibility on location once established in the team.

The technical scope and responsibility to grow significantly as Mirai scales.

Join Us

If you want to build robots that operate in the wild, Mirai is the place to grow.