Geospatial Data Engineer

About the role

Shearwater Aerospace is building autonomous‑flight intelligence for drones that make real‑time decisions without human input. As the first geospatial hire, you will architect the data‑processing brain that enables weather‑aware route optimization and safe navigation.

Key responsibilities

• Design geospatial processing pipelines that balance performance, accuracy, and extensibility.
• Build GIS analysis algorithms for weather‑aware route optimization.
• Integrate multi‑source datasets such as elevation, obstacles, airspace, and meteorological models.
• Create APIs that enable real‑time flight decision‑making.
• Establish patterns and tooling that evolve as the platform matures.

Required profile

• Ability to evaluate trade‑offs (e.g., choosing PostGIS over alternatives) and defend technical decisions.
• Up‑to‑date with modern geospatial best practices and OGC standards.
• Experience shipping production GIS systems, handling coordinate transformations, spatial indexing, and raster processing.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous, evolving environments and delivering incrementally.
• Clear communicator who can translate technical trade‑offs to non‑engineers.

Required skills

• GIS tools and libraries: QGIS, GDAL/OGR.
• Geospatial algorithms: visibility analysis, terrain analysis, spatial operations.
• Deep knowledge of coordinate systems, projections, and spatial data structures.
• Python ecosystem: Python, NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, GeoPandas, Rasterio, Xarray, Dask.
• Spatial databases: PostGIS, Apache Sedona.
• Cloud infrastructure (preferably GCP), Docker, Git.
• Optional performance‑critical programming in C/C++.

What we offer

• Equity ownership in a pioneering autonomous‑flight platform.
• Architectural influence alongside the CTO.
• Hybrid work flexibility with a base in Montreal.
• Opportunity to grow systems from prototype to production‑grade infrastructure.
• Direct impact: your code will run onboard aircraft making critical flight decisions.