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.