Navi — Founding Software Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site (5 days/week) | San Francisco, CA Compensation: $200,000 – $250,000 + competitive equity Hiring count: 1 Visa sponsorship: None available Reports to: CTO (name not listed on role page; no LinkedIn URL provided)

Navi captures everything a pilot sees and hears during a flight and turns it into automated debrief intelligence, giving flight instructors and squadron commanders sortie-level awareness that has never existed before. The platform is already live at Embry-Riddle, Purdue, UND, Sling Pilot Academy, and the United States Air Force. The company's hardware device, the Wave, sits in the cockpit and streams audio and telemetry data to the cloud in real time, where Navi's AI analytics generate the debrief.

Founded: 2024 | Team size: 1–10 (sub-ten-person team) | Stage: Seed Industry: Aviation / AI for flight training Website: flynavi.com Office: San Francisco, CA

• Genuine founding seat: One of the first engineers on a sub-ten-person team, working directly with the CTO, with a role that scales into technical leadership and a team to build beneath them.
• Code that ships to aircraft: Production software used daily by pilots, flight instructors, collegiate flight schools, airlines, and the U.S. Air Force. Bugs and missed data frames have real cockpit consequences.
• Flight training paid for: Navi funds flight training toward a pilot's license as a benefit, on top of early-stage equity and real ownership.
• Architecture is genuinely open: Framework selection, infrastructure decisions, and technical bets that persist as the company scales are this hire's to make.

• No intake call transcript or summary is published on the role page. An Intake Video is available on Contrario but is not transcribed here.
• Action: watch the Contrario intake video and add notes to this section before scoring candidates, in case it contains bars not written into the Requirements list.

A founding engineering seat owning entire systems end to end, from the backend and data pipelines that power Navi's AI debrief platform through to the interfaces instructors and commanders depend on daily. The role demands both a software engineering mindset and a pilot's contextual understanding of what a bug or a missed data frame actually costs in a cockpit. This is not a defined-scope job.

• →Build and scale the backend and data infrastructure that powers Navi's AI debrief platform, from ingestion of multimodal flight audio and telemetry through to streamed, structured output
• →Integrate flight dynamics, telemetry, and cockpit audio into intelligent debrief and training systems used by flight schools and the US Air Force
• →Make the architecture calls that define how Navi scales, including framework selection, infrastructure decisions, and technical bets that will persist as the company grows
• →Work directly with pilots, instructors, and military operators to build tools that hold up in the cockpit and the classroom, and translate operator feedback into engineering decisions
• →Ship production code across the full stack and iterate on real operator feedback, not hypotheticals
• →Lay the groundwork for a technical team you will eventually lead, setting engineering culture, code standards, and hiring bar from the founding stage

Tech stack: Python, TypeScript, full-stack (backend + frontend), real-time multimodal data pipelines (audio + telemetry), cloud infrastructure (AWS), CI/CD, containerization, deployment tooling

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Design, build, and operate complex systems in production
• Lead projects end to end from scoping through launch and iteration
• Deep expertise in backend systems, distributed infrastructure, data engineering, or full-stack development
• Design systems for scale, reliability, and performance
• Make architectural decisions with strong engineering judgment
• Raise the bar for teams through code reviews and mentorship
• Operate in ambiguity and move fast without sacrificing quality
• Build backend and data infrastructure for AI platform
• Integrate flight dynamics, telemetry, and cockpit audio into systems
• Make architecture calls that define company scaling
• Ship code that goes live in aircraft
• Interface with engineers across the entire stack
• Work directly with pilots, instructors, and military operators
• Translate operator needs into engineering decisions

These appear in the "About This Role" body text, not in Contrario's Requirements card. Two of them are hard gates not captured in the card and must be treated as Requirements for scoring:

1. FAA pilot certificate at private pilot level or higher (up to CFII or ATP); pilot certification is a non-negotiable for this role — hard gate
2. 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with a track record of designing, building, and operating complex systems in production
3. Full-stack capability across backend and frontend, with depth in backend systems, data pipelines, or distributed infrastructure
4. Proficiency in Python and TypeScript, the languages used in Navi's codebase — hard gate
5. Demonstrated ability to lead projects end to end, from scoping and technical design through launch and iteration, with minimal direction
6. Entrepreneurial, scrappy background: experience at early-stage startups or a clear track record of operating without a playbook
7. Willingness to work startup hours in person at the San Francisco office, five days a week

• Experience with modern data pipelines, real-time systems, or AI/ML integration
• Built something from zero that people actually used
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS), CI/CD, containerization, and deployment tooling
• Familiarity with aviation systems, avionics data formats, or defense technology environments
• Pilot with real aviation context
• Prior founding or lead engineer at an aviation or technical startup
• Full-stack track record with architectural ownership
• Demonstrated multimodal or real-time data pipeline experience
• Ready for the grind of an early-stage company

• Experience building software that integrates directly with aviation systems, avionics data formats, or flight training workflows
• Background in AI/ML integration, real-time systems, or multimodal data pipelines (audio plus telemetry)
• Familiarity with audio diarization, signal processing, or speech-to-text pipelines at the application layer
• Experience using Claude Code or similar AI-assisted development tools as part of daily engineering workflow
• Prior founding engineer or lead engineer role at an early-stage startup, with direct ownership of production systems

• No pilot certification and no credible path to one
• Exclusively slow-moving big-tech background with no startup exposure
• Job-jumping pattern without clear founding-role context
• Unverifiable relevance of prior work to Navi's domain
• Not ready for founding-level intensity and ownership

• Salary — $200,000 – $250,000
• Equity — Competitive equity (no percentage stated)
• Hiring count — 1
• Experience — 5+ years
• On-site policy — In person at the San Francisco office, five days a week, startup hours
• Visa sponsorship — None available
• Employment type — Full-time
• Location — San Francisco, CA
• Reports to — CTO

This role's Contrario submission form adds four questions beyond the standard Name / Email / LinkedIn / Github / Portfolio / Additional Notes set:

1. Current Location
2. LinkedIn
3. Why Navi?
4. What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

Voice: Q1 and Q2 are factual. Q3 and Q4 are addressed to the candidate and must be written in the candidate's voice from resume, outreach, and screening-call material.

No separate Screening Questions section is published on the role page. Use the Required Candidate Q&A above as the basis for call questions, plus:

1. Confirm FAA certificate level (PPL / IR / CPL / CFI / CFII / ATP), issue date, currency, and total hours.
2. Python and TypeScript depth — which was used most recently in production, and for what.
3. Walk through a system owned end to end from scoping to launch, including the architecture decisions made and what would be done differently.
4. Real-time / multimodal pipeline experience — throughput, latency constraints, failure handling.
5. Early-stage track record without a playbook, and comfort with five days a week on-site in SF at startup hours.
6. Why Navi specifically, and why now.

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Candidates awaiting initial approval by Navi. Stage 2 — Initial Screen — Initial screen. Stage 3 — First Round — First round. Stage 4 — Second Round — Second round. Stage 5 — Offer Extended Stage 6 — Candidate Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.

Durations are not published on the role page.

No Ideal Companies section is published on this role page.

For reference only — Contrario labels this section "Ideal Candidates -- DO NOT CONTACT". Do not source or approach these profiles. Samuel Winslow — LinkedIn link present on the role page as an icon button; URL not exposed in the copied HTML Ajay Chandrashekar — LinkedIn link present on the role page as an icon button; URL not exposed in the copied HTML

Headlines, locations, and fit reasons are not published for either profile. Ajay Chandrashekar was added as an ideal candidate 11 days before this capture.

None published yet — 0 candidates in pipeline at time of capture.

1. The pilot certificate is the make-or-break gate and it is NOT in Contrario's Requirements card. The body says an FAA certificate at PPL or above is non-negotiable, and "No pilot certification and no credible path to one" is Red Flag #1. Because the bot scores against written Requirements, a non-pilot may clear the bot and still be an automatic human rejection. Treat pilot certification as a hard Requirement for our own scoring. Worth confirming with Contrario whether "credible path to one" (Navi funds flight training) softens this for an otherwise exceptional engineer, or whether a current certificate is strictly required at submission.
2. Python + TypeScript is also a body-only hard gate — the Requirements card never names a language. Score it as a Requirement.
3. Requirements card is largely responsibilities, not qualifications. Items 9–15 restate "What You'll Own" bullets. They will be scored as Requirements by the bot, so resume language should visibly evidence AI-platform backend/data infra, multimodal ingestion, architecture ownership, and operator-facing collaboration.
4. No intake call summary — only an intake video. Watch it and add notes before scoring.
5. Ideal-candidate LinkedIn URLs did not survive the copy. If they're needed, re-copy with those cards expanded, or right-click the LinkedIn icon and copy the link.
6. No visa sponsorship + on-site SF five days a week — work authorization must be asked in outreach for anyone not already confirmed as a US citizen or green card holder.
7. Zero candidates in pipeline, job activated 8 days ago. We are early on this role.