Software Engineer (Rust / Python / Nix / AI)

Helsing is a defence AI company with a mission to protect our democracies. We believe we have a responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI, and take this responsibility seriously. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams and apply their skills to solve highly complex and impactful problems.

At Helsing we develop and deliver AI-based capabilities and infrastructure that allow semi-autonomous platforms to localise, navigate, and perceive the world in real-time. Our software is subject to significant and unorthodox technical constraints, and since what we build ultimately ends up in the hands of real people in high-risk, high-stress situations, it must be reliable and frictionless. We use Rust and Python, with Rust being used for anything production-adjacent due to the high stakes for correctness. Python is used mainly for AI model development and exploration, though we’re adopting Rust there too! Our work covers a wide variety of engineering disciplines:

• Distributed systems (eg, partitions and byzantine actors)
• Embedded computing (eg, resource-constraints and reverse-engineering)
• Robotics (eg, control and tasking)
• Networking (eg, low-bandwidth radios and routing)
• Deployment infrastructure (eg, air-gaps and heterogenous fleets)
• Security (eg, untrusted networks and actually-secret data)
• Machine learning (eg, model execution and dissemination)

We also have “Deployed Engineers” who focus on integrating and field-testing novel capabilities. They live where software meets the real world, like the depths of aircraft control systems, embrace the complexity of unfamiliar (or undocumented) APIs or protocols, and use their creativity and ingenuity to make Helsing’s technology work where the customer needs it to.

Experience-wise, we are seeking mid-level and senior engineers (we will be opening more positions for junior profiles soon). Helsing does not have visible level titles, and it's difficult to divide experience into distinct bands, but we roughly have:

• Junior: executes, or learning to execute, smaller tasks independently; curious and eager to learn; proactively validates work with others and absorbs feedback.
• Mid-level: executes tasks 1-2 months in length independently; understands and accounts for the non-technical context of their work; has impact beyond their immediate team.
• Senior: executes independently while maximising value delivered over cost incurred; not limited by team boundaries; key contributor to technology that enables Helsing’s overall success; at the top end: shapes Helsing’s technology investments and strategy.

ESTIMATED COMPENSATION:

Depends on experience and skill, but roughly:

Junior: €50-120k plus stock options of estimated value approximately equal to 50% of that salary.

Mid-level: €110-140k plus stock options of estimated value approximately equal to salary.

Senior: €130-220k plus significant stock option grant.