Senior Engineer

Senior Engineer (Full Stack, Frontend-Leaning) Location:

• Albuquerque, NM / Hybrid (U.S.A).

For all candidates outside of New Mexico:

• required to travel to New Mexico-based HQ once a quarter for a minimum of one week (M-F).

Position Type:

• Full-time Reports to: Engineering Lead About Apaluma Apaluma Inc. is a startup dedicated to transforming dark data into actionable intelligence.
• We build AI-driven and physics-based technologies that help government agencies unlock insights from regulatory, environmental, and real-time monitoring data.
• Our mission is to provide transparent, data-backed decision-making tools to manage resources effectively and sustainably.
• Our Team & How We Work We are a small team.
• Engineering, data science, design, and product all work together directly.
• There is not a lot of ceremony, and people regularly move between areas as the work requires it.
• This role is a good fit if you like variety, take ownership of problems end to end, and are energized by working across disciplines.
• Communication matters a lot to us.
• With a team this size, things move quickly and context gets lost if people are not talking to each other.
• We try to be direct and kind at the same time, give honest feedback, and keep each other in the loop without overloading on meetings.
• AI tools are a required part of how we work not only for speed but to deepen our knowledge since we are also building AI tools.
• Everyone on the team uses LLMs, copilots, and other AI-assisted tooling in their daily workflows.
• We are looking for someone who already works this way or is ready to start.
• Role Overview This is a frontend-leaning full stack role.
• Most of the day-to-day involves our user-facing application, but the work does cross into backend and infrastructure when it needs to.
• We care more about strong web development fundamentals than experience with a specific framework.
• The kind of person we are looking for understands why bundle size matters, thinks about load speed as a user experience issue, and can reason about what is happening between the browser and the server.
• Picking up a new framework is straightforward when the foundations are solid.
• Our end users are government regulators, environmental scientists, and program managers.
• They are not power users and they do not have a lot of patience for slow or confusing interfaces.
• A big part of this role is caring about what the experience actually feels like on their end.
• Key Responsibilities Frontend & User Experience Own and improve our frontend application with a focus on performance, usability, and maintainability.

Think about what the end user actually experiences:

• load times, responsiveness, clarity of the UI, and how errors are handled.
• Work with design and product to turn requirements into well-built interfaces that make sense for non-technical government users.
• Make informed decisions about bundle size, lazy loading, caching, and rendering strategies.
• Full Stack Contributions Contribute to backend services and APIs as the work requires.
• This is a frontend-leaning role, not a frontend-only one.
• Work with cloud infrastructure to support data ingestion, storage, and retrieval.
• Participate in architectural decisions and bring a practical perspective on performance and maintainability.
• Debug and optimize across the full stack when issues come up.
• Collaboration & Communication Work across functions with engineering, data science, design, and product on end-to-end feature delivery.
• Participate in sprint planning, standups, and retrospectives.
• Be clear about trade-offs, blockers, and what is and is not working.
• Ask questions early.
• Take care of your area of the codebase and push back constructively when a shortcut would hurt users.
• Help teammates through code reviews, pair programming, and knowledge sharing.
• Who You Are This section is less about credentials and more about fit.

The people who do well here tend to share a few things in common:

• They have strong opinions about web fundamentals but change their minds when someone makes a good argument.
• They genuinely like working with other people and building things together.
• They communicate directly and respectfully.
• They give feedback, take it well, and do not let problems sit.
• They think about the person using the product, not just the code behind it.
• They learn quickly.
• They might not know every tool in our stack today, but they pick things up fast because the fundamentals are solid.
• They are comfortable when things are ambiguous or shifting.
• Startups are like that.
• Qualifications Required 5+ years of professional full stack development experience with a frontend emphasis.

Deep foundational knowledge of web technologies:

• HTML, CSS, JavaScript, HTTP, browser rendering, and performance optimization.
• Experience building and maintaining production web applications used by real people.

A practical understanding of performance:

• bundle size, lazy loading, caching, render strategies, and why they matter.
• Comfort working across the stack.
• Not necessarily a backend expert, but not afraid of an API endpoint or a database query.
• Strong communication skills, written and verbal.
• This role involves explaining technical decisions to non-engineers and writing documentation that other people actually read.
• Big Pluses Experience with AWS services (ECS, S3, DynamoDB, or similar cloud infrastructure).
• Familiarity with Python and FastAPI or similar backend frameworks.
• Experience with Vue.js or comparable modern frontend frameworks (React, Svelte, etc.).
• Experience with TypeScript.
• Familiarity with data visualization frameworks and building dashboards.
• Understanding of DevOps practices (CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, automated testing).
• Interest or hands-on experience in AI/ML integration within applications.
• Our Current Tech Stack Listed here so you know what the work looks like day to day, not as a checklist.
• If you have strong fundamentals and a track record of picking things up, we want to hear from you regardless.

Frontend:

• Vue.js with TypeScript & Tailwind Backend: Python with FastAPI, deployed on ECS Data/Storage: AWS S3, Postgres, SqlAlchemy/SqlModel What We Offer Competitive salary and health benefits, including major medical, dental, and vision.
• Hybrid position with flexible work hours.
• A small, collaborative team that cares about the work and treats each other well.
• Real influence over technical direction and product decisions.

Meaningful problems:

• environmental data, regulatory modernization, and public-sector decision intelligence.
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