Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure & Graph Systems

Role Overview: As a Software Engineer on our Research & Development Team, you will help design, build, and scale new data products, infrastructure, and investigative tools from the ground up. Reporting directly to the Head of R&D, you will play a central role in system integration, feature design, and product prioritization while taking direct ownership of core engineering initiatives.

The R&D team is the engine behind Inca’s intelligence platform. We consume, process, store, and analyze massive streams of internal and external data, transforming complex, interconnected datasets into actionable, production-grade APIs, graph analytics, interactive dashboards, and real-time alert systems used directly by our clients.

What You'll Own

Design, build, and operate end-to-end data infrastructure and solutions for delivering APIs, custom containerized applications, automated alerting/reporting, and graph-based visualizations to federal and commercial clients.
Model and deploy relational, document, and graph databases for supporting investigative workflows and large-scale network analysis.
Build resilient ETL/ELT pipelines that ingest, normalize, and reconcile structured and semi-structured data from internal databases, REST APIs, blockchain nodes, and third-party feeds.
Own data quality, lineage, and reproducibility. Our outputs support enforcement actions and litigation, so provenance is a product requirement, not a nice-to-have.
Automate orchestration, systems integration, and deployment through CI/CD (GitHub Actions) into AWS cloud environments.
Partner with the Head of R&D, data scientists, and our specialized investigations teams to translate intelligence requirements into production software.
Make and document architecture decisions, evaluate new technology, and cut through genuinely ambiguous problems spanning crypto, finance, and national security.

What We Require

You must be able to pass a U.S. Tier 3 background investigation, which under federal rules is generally limited to U.S. citizens.
Proficient in Python.
Proven experience designing and operating production data infrastructure and pipelines — systems you were responsible for when they broke, not only contributed to.
Deep PostgreSQL experience (self-managed or RDS/Aurora), including schema design and query optimization.
Graph data modeling and network analysis experience. Neo4j and Cypher preferred; Neptune or a comparable graph database is fine. Comprehensive grasp of architectural trade-offs when deploying graph-based systems, including specific performance advantages and technical limitations.
Production experience deploying and configuring containerized services to AWS.

Nice to Have

Infrastructure-as-code tooling (Terraform).
Go as an additional language.
An active TS/SCI. We sponsor investigations for candidates without one, and you can begin work before adjudication completes.
Message queues and event-driven data pipelines (SQS/SNS, Kafka), and search or document stores (OpenSearch, MongoDB).
Familiarity with blockchain ledger data, smart contracts, or blockchain analytics. You will ramp meaningfully faster with it, and we weigh this heavily.
NLP techniques, LLM integration, or building and evaluating ML models.
Background in financial services or trading venues, or familiarity with SEC, CFTC, or FinCEN regulatory frameworks.
Experience operating in FedRAMP, AWS GovCloud, or NIST 800-171 environments.