Software Engineer – Advanced Systems (Hamilton)

About the Role Draganfly Innovations is seeking a talented and forward‑thinking Software Engineer – Advanced Systems to join our growing engineering team, with a strong focus on real‑time systems, autonomous operations, and remote command & control platforms. The ideal candidate brings experience building scalable, low‑latency systems and has a passion for developing software that interfaces with hardware, sensors, and live data streams. In this role you will provide technical leadership, drive architectural decisions, and play a key role in delivering mission‑critical software that powers Draganfly’s drone ecosystem.

This includes systems for real‑time video transmission, telemetry, edge‑to‑cloud data pipelines, autonomous capabilities, and remote fleet control. Reports directly to the Director of Software Engineering. Key Responsibilities Lead the design, development, and delivery of real‑time, distributed systems for drone operations and control.

Architect and build platforms for low‑latency video streaming, telemetry ingestion, and real‑time data processing. Design and implement remote command and control systems for managing autonomous and semi‑autonomous drone fleets. Develop scalable backend services and APIs that support mission planning, live monitoring, and control workflows.

Contribute to systems enabling autonomy, including integration with AI/ML models, edge computing, and decision‑making pipelines. Ensure high performance, reliability, and fault tolerance in mission critical, real‑time environments. Write clean, efficient, and maintainable code aligned with best practices.

Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and code reviews to maintain engineering standards. Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to deliver end‑to‑end solutions. Troubleshoot and resolve issues in production systems with focus on latency, throughput, and system resilience.

Monitor system performance, analyze streaming/data metrics, and drive continuous improvements. Ensure robustness of real‑time and mission‑critical systems through rigorous testing, monitoring, and deployment best practices. Stay current with emerging technologies in real‑time systems, robotics, autonomy, and distributed computing.

Qualifications 5+ years of professional software development experience, including real‑time and/or distributed systems. Strong proficiency in one or more of: Python, C++, JavaScript/TypeScript. Experience building low‑latency pipelines for streaming data (video, telemetry, sensor data) and/or real‑time processing systems.

Hands‑on experience with low‑latency communication protocols/technologies such as WebRTC, RTSP, gRPC, MQTT, and WebSockets. Proven ability to design and operate backend services, APIs, and microservices in production environments. Cloud experience (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and familiarity with edge‑to‑cloud architectures.

Experience with CI/CD and containerization (Docker); Kubernetes experience preferred. Working knowledge of databases (SQL and/or NoSQL) and patterns for high‑throughput ingestion. Strong understanding of performance, scalability, reliability, and fault‑tolerance principles.

Experience working in Agile/Scrum teams; strong collaboration and communication skills. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience). Willingness to travel as required.

Nice to Have UAV/drone, robotics, or autonomous systems experience (e.g., ROS or similar middleware; autonomy/mission execution concepts). Video engineering experience: encoding/decoding, streaming optimization, or computer vision pipelines. Edge computing/on‑device processing experience (resource‑constrained systems, GPU/accelerator usage, offline‑first patterns).

Command‑and‑control (C2) platform exposure, fleet management systems, or mission‑critical control software. Event‑driven architecture experience and real‑time messaging systems (e.g., Kafka or equivalent). Security experience for distributed systems and remote‑control workflows (authn/authz, key management, secure comms).

Observability expertise: distributed tracing, metrics, SLOs/SLIs, and performance profiling in real‑time systems. Exposure to AI/ML integration patterns (model serving at the edge, perception/autonomy pipelines). Compensation and Benefits Market‑competitive salary: $100,000 – $115,000 Equity / Stock Options: Participation in the company’s stock option plan for long‑term growth alignment.

Comprehensive medical and dental benefits, including a Health Spending Account (HSA). Matching RRSP program to support long‑term financial wellbeing. Generous time‑off program, including vacation, wellness days, and the full week off between Christmas and New Year’s.

Professional development support to advance your technical skills and certifications. #J-18808-Ljbffr