Lead Software Engineer, Platform

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.