The Engineering Challenge

Building software for machines introduces challenges that traditional software systems rarely face. Devices operate in real-world environments, networks are unreliable, and software must interact with hardware, sensors, and real-time data.

At Viam, engineers build the platform and tools that make those machines programmable, observable, and manageable at scale.

About the Team

New York City (Hybrid 3+ days per week in office)

This team owns the infrastructure that moves data from devices to the cloud and makes it usable across the Viam platform. That spans real-time streaming pipelines, backend services, and the platform APIs. Reliability, latency, and correctness here affect every solution built on Viam. The team works primarily in Go and C++. Reporting directly to the CEO.

What You'll Own

As Lead you'll manage a team of 4-6 engineers, staying hands-on across technical leadership, development, and people management. Focused on backend platform challenges that power Viam.

• Set priorities and technical direction for the team.
• Lead the architecture of the end-to-end streaming pipeline from device to cloud.
• Drive the reliability and performance of the services and platform APIs.
• Own cross-team problems and take them to resolution.
• Communicate clearly on progress, tradeoffs, and risks to engineering leadership.

What You Bring

We're looking for a technical lead with strong systems judgment who can own direction for a team and work cross-functionally across engineering.

• Experience leading a team of engineers and setting technical direction.
• Background building and scaling backend or platform infrastructure in production, ideally in Go.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and distributed systems at scale.
• Sound judgment on system design and tradeoffs under real constraints.
• Track record of driving cross-team projects from ambiguity to production.
• Experience with streaming systems or real-time data transport is a plus. 
• Robotics or IoT experience is not required.

How We Work

Our culture emphasizes ownership, curiosity, and decisive execution.

• This space has brand new challenges and we all have an appetite to learn
• Good work in production beats perfect work in review
• We know that the best teams help each other succeed through feedback

The salary for this role is between $220,000 - 250,000 /year. Your exact offer will vary based on factors, including experience level, skillset, market location, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company. We recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced, or more senior, than this job description as posted. In these situations, the updated salary range will be communicated to you as a candidate.

Your exact offer will vary based on factors including experience level, skillset, market location, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company. We recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced, or more senior, than this job description as posted. In these situations, the updated salary range will be communicated to you as a candidate.

The Engineering Challenge

Building software for machines introduces challenges that traditional software systems rarely face. Devices operate in real-world environments, networks are unreliable, and software must interact with hardware, sensors, and real-time data.

At Viam, engineers build the platform and tools that make those machines programmable, observable, and manageable at scale.

About the Team

New York City (Hybrid — 3+ days per week in office)

The Fleet Management team builds the control plane for machines running on Viam — the cloud systems and web applications that allow developers to configure devices, deploy software across fleets, and operate machines at scale.

The team owns the lifecycle of machine configuration and software running on those devices, along with the platform infrastructure that supports it — including authentication and permissions, machine logs uploaded from deployed devices, and the usage tracking behind Viam’s billing systems.

Our work sits at the intersection of product engineering and platform infrastructure. Engineers on this team build systems developers interact with directly while also evolving the backend architecture that supports machines operating in the real world.

The stack includes Golang backend services, modern web applications (Svelte / Typescript), MongoDB, and gRPC APIs. 

What You'll Own

Engineers on this team own systems end-to-end, from architecture and implementation through production operation. As the number of machines and developers using Viam grows, the team is focused on evolving the architecture that allows fleets of machines to be managed reliably at scale.

As a Senior or Staff Engineer, you’ll help raise the engineering bar through architecture discussions, mentorship, and guidance on complex projects.

Examples of work in this role include:

• designing and building backend services that manage machine configuration and fleet state
• developing full-stack features across APIs, databases, and web applications used to operate machines
• building systems that deploy configuration and software updates across fleets of machines
• evolving authentication and permissions systems used across the Viam platform
• building infrastructure for storing and retrieving logs uploaded from deployed machines
• improving the systems that track machine usage and power Viam’s billing platform
• shaping architecture decisions that help the fleet platform scale as deployments grow

What You Bring

We’re looking for an experienced engineer who enjoys owning systems end-to-end and shipping production software. 

You may have experience:

• building production systems in distributed or cloud environments
• designing APIs and backend services that operate reliably at scale
• debugging complex distributed systems or production services
• working across teams to improve shared platform capabilities, developer tooling, or user-facing systems
• making sound technical tradeoffs as systems and architecture evolve

Experience with robotics or IoT is not required.

How We Work

Our culture emphasizes ownership, curiosity, and decisive execution.

• This space has brand new challenges and we all have an appetite to learn
• Good work in production beats perfect work in review
• We know that the best teams help each other succeed through feedback

We know great engineers come from many backgrounds. If you're excited about the challenges we’re solving, we encourage you to apply. The salary for this role is between $ 190,000 - 259,000 /year.

While we may not have the role open that is a great fit for you now, we may have something perfect for you just around the corner! Share your interests with us, and we will do our best to match you to your dream job once it comes along. 

What to Expect:

This application is not going into an empty void! Once you fill out the details below, we will tag you for future opportunities that we think could be a fit for you.

Having said that, we encourage you to continuously check our site and stay up to date with our LinkedIn for newly posted openings. 

Role summary

As a Technical Content Engineer, you'll design learning experiences that take developers from first hearing about Viam to confidently building production applications. This isn't just about organizing content—it's about understanding how developers actually learn, what motivates them to keep going, and what obstacles cause them to drop off. You'll design and build real-world robotics applications and create courses and learning paths based on these applications that drive real adoption, working hands-on with Viam to ensure your designs are grounded in the actual developer experience.

We're looking for experienced engineers who want to help us build the best technology education program in the industry. Our ideal candidate is a senior software developer who also loves to teach. You've built non-trivial applications, but you also have a passion for explaining technical concepts in just the right way.

This is a unique role because it combines teaching and software engineering. You'll design highly technical self-paced courses and instructor-led training courses with hands-on exercises to help people get the most out of Viam. You'll also become a Viam expert. When applying, please let us know in a few words why you'd be a good fit. 

What you'll do

• Design the overall architecture of Viam's self-paced learning content: what courses exist, how they sequence, what prerequisites they assume, and how they build toward real capabilities
• Evaluate training requirements by use case and user role, and turn those requirements into courses with clearly defined learning objectives and learning paths
• Architect and develop sample applications using a variety of programming languages (e.g., Python, Go, TypeScript) and Viam
• Design, develop, and maintain course materials including hands-on coding exercises, presentation content, video storyboards, student and instructor guides, demo scripts, quizzes and assessments
• Build working projects in Viam yourself to validate that your curriculum designs match the developer experience
• Use feedback and survey data from students, instructors, and Viam engineering teams to create new courses and improve existing courses
• Build train-the-trainer materials to enable Viam instructors to deliver training courses effectively
• Analyze where developers struggle or drop off, using both quantitative data and qualitative feedback to iterate on curriculum design
• Continually look for ways to extend and improve our courses to support new use cases and features, and to enhance the learning experience for students and their instructors
• Stay current with adult learning research and industry best practices in developer education

What you bring

• A Bachelor's or advanced degree in computer science or a related engineering discipline, or equivalent experience in a software or technology-related field. Aptitude and attitude are more important than credentials
• Advanced skills in at least one programming language (e.g., Python, Go, TypeScript). Understanding of at least one other programming language is a big plus
• Skill with modern software development practices and infrastructure
• Demonstrated experience in at least two of the following areas: teaching, technical content development, public speaking, technical writing
• Understanding of instructional design principles—learning objectives, scaffolding, assessment design, motivation—whether through formal training or hard-won experience
• An interest in sweating the details of individual learning moments
• A "can-do" attitude, the ability to work collaboratively, and deliver on a deadline
• You enjoy self-driven exploration and education on new software and hardware, and can adapt innovative technologies and learn quickly in a fast-paced environment
• Experience or genuine interest in working with physical hardware—you'll be building robots as part of this job
• Experience with robotics, IoT, embedded systems, or industrial automation is a significant plus

In 3 months

• Complete new hire onboarding and technical training to acquire hands-on technical knowledge of the Viam platform and ecosystem, specific capabilities and use cases
• You understand the Viam platform and feel comfortable assembling robots based on tutorials and writing programs for robots with our SDKs
• Via new hire training and shadowing, acquire a deep knowledge of Viam training offerings, student personae, and learning objectives
• You have audited existing documentation and learning content to identify gaps and opportunities
• Comfortable with creating and releasing new or updated training content, given a course outline with defined learning objectives

In 6-12 months

• You have built one or more substantial reference robotics applications on Viam
• You have shipped at least two complete courses from outline to publication
• You have established a repeatable curriculum development process that scales as the team grows
• You are iterating on existing courses based on quantitative completion data and qualitative learner feedback
• With the broader education team, contribute to refining processes and tooling to drive increased development velocity and quality of training content
• You have contributed to internal enablement programs

The starting salary range for this role is $165,000 - $235,000/year.

Role summary

As a Staff Technical Writer, you'll own the quality and consistency of Viam's developer-facing documentation. Your work spans all four documentation types: reference docs, explanations, tutorials, and how-to guides. You'll transform rough drafts, working code, and technical walkthroughs into polished, publishable content that helps developers understand and adopt Viam. You’ll also develop docs from scratch through close collaboration with product engineering teams.

What you'll do

• Write and edit documentation that helps developers integrate Viam into their projects, from first API call to production deployment
• Maintain documentation standards and style guidelines that ensure consistency as content scales
• Contribute to and improve our documentation toolchain, including our Hugo framework, GitHub Actions workflows, and Vale linting configuration
• Review code samples for accuracy and clarity, working with engineers to resolve issues
• Contribute to information architecture decisions—how content is organized, navigated, and discovered
• Ensure documentation stays current as the platform evolves, identifying gaps and outdated content proactively
• Build robots and write programs using Viam yourself—we believe the best documentation comes from firsthand experience with the platform

What you bring

• Experience writing documentation for developers, with a portfolio that demonstrates your ability to explain technical concepts clearly
• Enough technical fluency to work through tutorials independently, run code samples, and identify errors—you don't need to be an engineer, but you need to be technically curious and comfortable at the command line
• Experience with docs-as-code workflows: Git, Markdown, static site generators (Hugo experience is a plus)
• Familiarity with documentation automation—linting tools like Vale, CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions, or scripting to improve workflows
• Strong opinions about what makes documentation good, backed by experience seeing what works and what doesn't
• The ability to give and receive editorial feedback constructively
• Experience or genuine interest in working with physical hardware—you'll be building robots as part of this job
• Experience with robotics, IoT, or industrial automation is a plus but not required

In 3 months

• You understand the Viam platform and feel comfortable assembling robots based on tutorials and writing small programs for robots with our SDKs
• You are comfortable with our toolchain and have started contributing improvements to our workflows
• You are comfortable discussing the product with our engineers for documentation purposes
• You have shipped polished documentation for at least one major platform feature
• You’ve completed significant revision of a section of docs.

In 6-12 months

• You are continuing to revise and improve the Viam documentation
• You are improving the documentation based on qualitative and quantitative data
• You are building out or curating content to enable developers without hardware experience to use Viam
• You have established documentation standards that scale as the team and content grow
• You have made measurable improvements to our documentation infrastructure and automation

The starting salary range for this role is $165,000 - $235,000/year.