Senior Software engineer, Backend

At HEN Technologies, we’re building Physical AI for the real world—intelligent systems that sense, understand, and act in high-stakes physical environments. Our first application is transforming fire response: combining advanced fluid dynamics, IoT-enabled hardware, real-world operational data, and AI-powered decision support to help firefighters suppress fires faster, use less water, reduce fatigue, and improve safety. By connecting the physical layer of emergency response with predictive intelligence, HEN is building the infrastructure for a safer, more adaptive future.

About the Role

HEN builds the connected systems fire departments use to run incidents from intelligent hardware at the hydrant, FDC, and pump panel through to the command tablet on scene and the chief's strategic dashboard. STAR-IQ is our incident command platform:an iOS/web app that gives Incident Commanders and Battalion Chiefs live unit assignments, comms channels, org structure, building preplans, and progress tracking during active incidents. It runs alongside CAD, building/preplan databases, mappingservices, and our broader ecosystem (CRUX, TITAN, FLUID-IQ, the ARES agentic co-pilot). You will help define HEN’s long-term interoperability architecture across CAD, GIS, identity, telemetry, and incident-command systems.

Responsibilities

You'll own the surface area where STAR-IQ and related subsystems meet everything else. That includes:

• CAD integration. Work with Fire Departments (FD) and Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) vendors to design and maintain the integration service that ingests incident data from CAD systems, transforms the CAD data to a unified schema, and exposes it to the STAR-IQ backend system.

• Building and preplan data. Build integrations and ingest FD preplan and building data to the STAR-IQ backend, normalizing wildly different source schemas into a reliable application format.

• Mapping and GIS. Integrating Mapbox, ESRI, and department-custom GIS layers behind the Map and Dashboard surfaces - hydrants, FD assets, weather, exposures, district boundaries.

• Identity and device management. Wiring up SSO, AuthN/AuthZ (GCP), and MDM flows so a department can provision users and iPads at scale without HEN being in the loop for every change.

• Audit and incident data. Making sure every integration writes through the append-only audit log and respects the data model that separates production, training, and simulated data.

• Field reliability and partner enablement. Writing the integration docs, sample payloads, and conformance tests that a CAD vendor or FD IT team can actually use. Running joint technical integration sessions with departments during rollout.

• Compliance-aware design. Building integrations that respect CJIS Security

• Policy, agency-specific data handling rules, and the separation between production CJI and our training/simulated environments.

Must-have qualifications

• A Bachelor’s or higher degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

• 8+ years building production integrations between backend services andthird-party systems - ideally messy, legacy, or vendor-controlled ones.

• Public-safety, healthcare, fintech, telecom, or industrial backgrounds all translatewell.

• Background in or around the fire service, EMS, or emergency management. You can sit in a room (physical or virtual) with a fire department's IT lead and a CAD vendor's engineer and move a conversation forward.

• Past work with CAD, RMS, or other public-safety systems (Tyler, Hexagon, Central Square, Mark43, RapidSOS, FirstNet). GIS work - Mapbox, ESRI, PostGIS, GeoJSON pipelines.

• Prior experience working under CJIS, FedRAMP, or similar regulated frameworks.

• Strong backend engineering experience in Python and TypeScript/Node.js, with working familiarity across both ecosystems.

• Production experience with event-driven systems: MQTT, WebSockets, Kafka, or equivalents.

• Comfortable with REST and gRPC API design, schema evolution, and writing adapters between systems.

• Cloud-native experience - GCP, Pub/Sub, Cloud Run, IAM, secret management.

• Familiarity with CJIS-aligned cloud environments.

Nice-to-have qualifications

• MDM experience (Jamf, Intune, Kandji) at a non-trivial scale.

• Authentication stack: OAuth/OIDC, SAML, mTLS, SCIM, and the operational reality of SSO rollouts at enterprise customers.

Clearance and eligibility

Because our product integrates with Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) and other systems that may handle Criminal Justice Information (CJI), this role requires. Eligibility to pass a fingerprint-based national background check under the FBI CJIS Security Policy. Completion of CJIS Security Awareness Training and approval by the relevant CJIS Systems Agency (CSA) prior to accessing production CJI environments. Status as a U.S. person (U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident). Willingness to comply with agency-specific personnel security requirements, which can include drug screening, additional background checks, and ongoingrecertification.

Compensation and Benefits

The projected base salary for this position in the San Francisco Bay Area ranges from $180,000 to $220,000. Final compensation will be determined based on the specific qualifications and experience of the selected candidate. Additionally, this role may qualify for equity. HEN Technologies provides a robust benefits package, featuring a comprehensive well-being program and flexible time-off policies.

Don’t meet every single requirement? We still encourage you to apply. Research has shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply for roles unless they meet every qualification, and we don’t want that to stop great people from considering HEN Technologies.

HEN Technologies is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.

We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace where people from different backgrounds can do meaningful work together. If you’re excited about our mission and this role, but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply. You may be the right candidate for this role or another opportunity at HEN.