The posting
We are looking for an experienced Senior Integration Software Engineer to bring our algorithms and software backend together into reliable, operational solutions, and to take technical ownership of how our software is integrated.
Optics11 is a deep-tech company developing advanced fiber-optic sensing technologies for challenging environments and applications in energy and underwater security. Our systems enable high-performance sensing and monitoring through advanced photonics, signal processing, and data-driven intelligence.
We are expanding our R&D team with an Integration Software Engineer who enjoys building clean, reliable interfaces between components and working where software meets hardware, and who takes ownership of making complex systems work together end to end.
As a Senior Integration Software Engineer, you will support their integration into operational systems: connecting algorithms to the backend through robust APIs, building data connectors, health reporting and control software, and defining and verifying integrations with Command and Control (C2) systems.
You will work closely with domain experts in acoustics, signal processing and machine learning, and with the software engineering team, and hands-on with our monitoring systems at our headquarters and production facility. You will also take technical ownership of work delivered by internal and external engineers and set the standard for good engineering practices.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead software integration engineering for our underwater acoustic sensing systems, ensuring frontend and backend components, algorithms, and hardware systems work together reliably.
- Integrate the algorithmic toolbox with our system backends, turning research code into maintainable, versioned and deployable software components.
- Implement data interfaces for our real-time sonar processing pipeline, to ingest multiple sensors (acoustic, heading, temperature, pressure, etc.) from internal and external data acquisition systems. Implement health reporting, logging and monitoring, so that the status and performance of software and system components is visible and actionable.
- Develop the software control layer for our sensing systems and their hardware components, including APIs for commanding, state handling, error handling and recovery.
- Implement, align and verify software integrations with external partners and C2 systems, being directly involved in defining interfaces, maintaining interface specifications and running joint integration tests.
- Testing & debugging: Develop system-level test suites and CI/CD pipelines, diagnose communication failures, and ensure secure, reliable data transfers as the toolbox and backends evolve.
- Address performance, latency and scalability of the integrated pipeline, together with algorithm and backend developers.
- Work hands-on with integrated software and hardware systems at our headquarters and production facility, with occasional on-site visits.
- Review the work of junior engineers and external development partners in depth, promote good practices for packaging, versioning and release, and share integration knowledge across the team.
Why Join Us?
- Join one of Europe’s most promising deep-tech scale-ups.
- Shape the future of a rapidly growing multidisciplinary R&D organization.
- Competitive salary and benefits package.
- Enjoy regular team activities and company events.
- Fresh team lunches provided 5 times/week.
Qualifications:
- BSc or MSc in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field.
- Significant professional experience in software engineering, with a focus on system integration, backend or platform development.
- Extensive experience developing production software in Python, including packaging, testing, dependency management and writing maintainable, well-structured code.
- Familiarity with systems programming in C++, or Rust, for the purpose of extending Python for more performance or hardware control.
- Proven experience designing and implementing APIs and messaging interfaces (e.g. MQTT, WebSocket) and data serialization (e.g. protobuf).
- Experience with realtime data pipelines, and handling high-throughput or streaming data.
- Experience with Docker, CI/CD and automated testing in a Linux environment.
- Experience working with software that interacts with physical systems, and comfort doing hands-on integration and troubleshooting in a lab or production environment.
- Experience reviewing code and designs, mentoring junior engineers, and setting engineering standards.
- An outcome-focused mindset, with the ability to own a problem end to end or break it down for others.
- Ability to work with algorithm developers and translate research code into robust, maintainable software.
- Flexible and proactive in taking on what needs to be addressed, and comfortable in a fast-paced scale-up environment.
- Good communication skills in English and the ability to coordinate with internal teams and external partners.
- Willingness to work primarily from our Amsterdam headquarters, as parts of the role involve classified information and physical systems.
Nice to Have:
- Knowledge of defense systems or defense standards (e.g. NATO STANAGs, MIL-STD), for example in naval, maritime security or surveillance systems.
- Experience with the scientific Python stack (e.g. NumPy, SciPy) or integrating signal processing or ML models into production systems.
- Experience developing software interfaces for controlling instruments or devices.
- Experience with other messaging or streaming frameworks (e.g. Kafka, ZeroMQ, DDS).
- Familiarity with observability tooling.
Security & Compliance:
You'll be working with clients in the defense and security sectors, obtaining a Certificate of No Objection issued by the AIVD (Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service) is mandatory. This means you will need to undergo a security screening. For more information, please refer to details on security screening.
