VP of Engineering

The role

The VP of Engineering will take ownership of all engineering functions and set technical strategy. This role involves making architecture decisions, managing technical debt, and scaling the engineering organization.

What you will do

• Set technical strategy and own architecture decisions
• Ensure engineering effort is directed toward scalable, roadmap-aligned solutions
• Prioritize integrations and new initiatives with business value
• Build and own core engineering processes including pipelines, release management, testing, and incident response
• Manage technical debt and align engineering execution with business priorities
• Coordinate across cloud, onboard software, autonomy, QA, hardware integration, product, and field operations
• Scale and lead the engineering organization

Required qualifications

• Strong engineering leadership experience building complex, mission-critical, life-critical, or high-load enterprise/B2B systems
• Experience managing teams of 50+ people
• Embedded / hardware-close software experience
• Solid understanding of Linux-based edge systems, networking, containers, companion computers, and ARM platforms such as NVIDIA Jetson or Raspberry Pi
• Experience with distributed systems and unreliable connectivity, including fault tolerance, recovery, observability, fleet management, and remote updates
• Strong cloud and backend architecture knowledge, including APIs, databases, messaging, infrastructure, security, and production operations
• Experience building reliable, safety-sensitive systems with strong testing, release, and incident-management practices
• Business-minded approach
• Ability to define technical strategy, make architecture decisions, manage technical debt, and align engineering execution with business priorities
• Proven experience scaling engineering teams and leading engineering managers, team leads, and senior technical contributors
• Ability to coordinate across cloud, onboard software, autonomy, QA, hardware integration, product, and field operations
• Strong communication skills and professional English

Nice to have

• Good understanding of robotics or embedded system architecture, with familiarity with technologies such as MAVLink, ArduPilot, PX4, or ROS 2
• Miltech experience, especially Ukrainian miltech
• Direct experience with drones, robotics, or autonomous systems
• Experience with Python, C/C++, Podman, Docker, or similar technologies
• Experience with simulation, software-in-the-loop, or hardware-in-the-loop testing
• Knowledge of secure boot, device hardening, signed software, hardware-backed identity, or operation in degraded communication environments

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Insurance
• Paid sick leaves
• 20 paid days off per year
• Benefits of the defense sector (reservation, etc)

Before you apply

• Recruiter Screen
• Interview with CPO
• Technical Interview
• Managerial Interview
• Final Interview with CEO

About the company

Swarmer develops software that makes drones autonomous and allows them to operate together in large, coordinated teams. The company is a Ukrainian defense startup that went public on NASDAQ in March 2026.