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Backend Software Engineer – Defense

Washington, D.C.
Full Time On-site
A World-Changing Company
 
Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.

The Role
 
Palantir's defense product vertical builds mission-critical products for the modern warfighter. We provide a complete ecosystem where customers can securely integrate and visualize their data, and build sophisticated, full-fledged programs such as common operating pictures, alert-triaging inboxes, and resource allocation planning tools driven by rich-ML models. Our customers use our defense offering to perform rich analyses that drive core operations within their organizations - these programs are relied upon for daily operations in the command centers and battlefronts of militaries across the world.
 
Backend Software Engineers at Palantir build software at scale to transform how organizations use data. Our Software Engineers are involved throughout the product lifecycle, from idea generation, design, prototyping, and production delivery. You will collaborate closely with technical and non-technical teammates to understand our customers' problems and build products that solve them. We encourage movement across teams to share context, skills, and experience, so you'll learn about many different technologies and aspects of each product. Engineers work autonomously and make decisions independently, within a community that will support and challenge you as you grow and develop, becoming a strong technical contributor and engineering leader.
 
Your day-to-day workflow will vary, adapting to the requirements of our users and the technical challenges that arise. One day, you may find yourself collaborating with other engineers to architect a new system that enables a novel workflow, the next you could be fine-tuning performance to enable low-latency operational outcomes.
 
Our Product Development organization is made up of small teams of Software Engineers. Each team focuses on a specific aspect of a product and work collaboratively to build cross functional capabilities, streamline user workflows and continuously improve our software's efficiency and reliability.
 
We're hiring engineers who are passionate about solving real-world problems and empowering developers and end-users to do their work optimally. If you’re motivated to develop reliable, performant, scalable systems and design robust APIs and primitives, please join us.

About Palantir

Palantir

Palantir Technologies is a leading software company specializing in data integration, artificial intelligence, and decision-making platforms used across defense, intelligence, and commercial sectors. Its core platforms—Gotham and Foundry—enable organizations to fuse large, complex datasets into operational insights used for mission planning, battlefield awareness, supply chain optimization, and enterprise decision-making.

For job seekers, Palantir offers opportunities across software engineering, data science, product development, AI/ML engineering, forward-deployed engineering, cybersecurity, and technical consulting roles. The company is especially attractive to engineers, analysts, and problem-solvers who want to work closely with real-world users in defense and intelligence environments, often deploying directly alongside government and military customers.

Unlike traditional software companies that build tools in isolation, Palantir operates in a highly applied model where engineers work directly with end users to solve mission-critical problems in real time. Employees often embed with defense, intelligence, and enterprise organizations to build and deploy software that directly supports operations in areas such as counterterrorism, military planning, logistics, and cyber defense.

As demand for AI-driven decision-making, data fusion, and real-time intelligence continues to grow across government and industry, Palantir remains one of the most influential players in defense-adjacent software. For professionals seeking high-impact technical work at the intersection of data, AI, and national security, Palantir stands out as one of the most competitive and mission-driven employers in defense technology.

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