Vassar Labs is a climate‑technology startup that builds critical infrastructure for Indian state governments, powering flood early warning, reservoir operations, urban water supply and digital agriculture. Their mission is to harness data and software to make public services more resilient and efficient. The company has grown rapidly, deploying self‑hosted open‑source stacks across Hyderabad and other Indian cities, and is now inviting fresh talent to join their engineering teams. The Vassar Labs Java Hireathon 2026 is a unique hiring event that blends a one‑hour online test, a one‑day onsite hackathon, and a two‑round technical interview. The event is open to graduates from 2024‑2026 who have strong Java projects and are looking to work on real‑world climate tech. Candidates choose a track based on experience: Track 1 (0‑3 years) for Software Engineers, Track 2 (3+ years) for Senior Software Engineers, and Track 3 (6+ years) for Tech Leads. Key responsibilities for each track include: 1. Designing and implementing RESTful services in Java. 2. Modeling relational and NoSQL data for high‑throughput ingestion. 3. Building and tuning message streaming pipelines. 4. Deploying and maintaining self‑hosted open‑source infrastructure. 5. Writing unit and integration tests. 6. Participating in code reviews and architectural discussions. 7. Optimizing SQL queries and NoSQL schemas. 8. Managing containerized deployments on Kubernetes. 9. Monitoring system health with metrics and dashboards. 10. Collaborating with cross‑functional teams (data science, product, operations). The tech stack spans Java 17/21, a Java web framework (Spring Boot or similar), ORM (Hibernate), relational databases with geospatial extensions (PostgreSQL/PostGIS), document and wide‑column stores (MongoDB, Cassandra), in‑memory cache (Redis), search engine (Elasticsearch), distributed message log (Kafka), stream‑processing framework (Kafka Streams or Flink), batch processing, workflow orchestration, containers, Linux, and Python for AI‑ML services. Growth path: Engineers start by delivering end‑to‑end features, then move to owning services and streaming pipelines, and eventually lead architectural decisions and mentor teams. The company values autonomy, continuous learning, and impact‑driven work. Why join Vassar Labs? You’ll work on mission‑critical systems that directly affect millions of citizens, gain hands‑on experience with cutting‑edge open‑source technologies, and grow in a fast‑paced, collaborative environment that rewards ownership and innovation.