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Sr. Staff Backend Engineer AI-Native, Devices Cloud

Remote, USA; Remote, Canada

About Life360

Life360's mission is to keep people close to the ones they love. Our category-leading mobile app and Tile tracking devices empower members to protect the people, pets, and things they care about most with a range of services, including location sharing, safe driver reports, and crash detection with emergency dispatch. Life360 serves approximately 91.6 million monthly active users (MAU) across more than 180 countries.

Life360 is a Remote First company. All positions, unless otherwise specified, can be performed remotely (within the US and Canada).

About the Devices Cloud Team

The Devices Cloud team owns the backend services that power Life360's fleet of connected hardware — Tile trackers, Jiobit wearables, Pet GPS trackers, and emerging device categories. We manage real-time device state, high-frequency telemetry ingest, and the cloud infrastructure that translates physical-world signals into reliable, family-facing experiences. Our work sits at the intersection of hardware, firmware, mobile, and platform — and runs at a scale where correctness and reliability aren't optional.

We are an AI-Native team. AI isn't an add-on to how we work — it's how we work. We've redesigned our development workflows around AI, using it as a first-class collaborator at every stage: spec writing, code generation, test authoring, incident triage, and system design. We ship faster and go deeper because of it. We're looking for engineers who want to help define what AI-native backend development looks like for complex, hardware-connected systems.

About the Job

As a Sr. Staff Cloud Engineer on the Devices Cloud team, you will own the technical direction of the cloud systems that power Life360's connected hardware — Tile trackers, Jiobit wearables, and emerging device categories. This is a systems-level leadership role: you are the recognized technical authority for our device cloud infrastructure, spanning real-time state management, high-frequency telemetry ingest, and the integration layer that connects physical hardware to family-facing experiences.

At this level, your work extends well beyond implementation. You set technical direction, define architectural standards, mentor Staff and Senior engineers, and partner with engineering and product leadership to align the technical roadmap with company goals. You operate across teams and functional groups — influencing firmware, mobile, platform, and data teams — and your decisions shape systems serving tens of millions of families daily.

You are also a leader in AI-native engineering. You don't just use AI — you define how it should be used. You architect agent-driven workflows, codify practices that multiply team output, and partner with engineering leadership to spread these patterns across the broader organization.

For candidates based in the US, the salary range for this position is $216,500 to $318,500 USD. For candidates based out of Canada, the salary range is 251,000 to $295,000 CAD. Note: We take into consideration an individual's background and experience in determining final salary- therefore, base pay offered may vary considerably depending on geographic location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The compensation package includes a wide range of medical, dental, vision, financial, and other benefits, as well as equity.

What You'll Do

  • Own the technical architecture and long-term roadmap for Devices Cloud systems — device connectivity, telemetry ingest, state management, command/control, and data pipelines — ensuring they are scalable, secure, and resilient at Life360's scale.
  • Define and drive system-level technical direction across multiple teams, identifying architectural trade-offs, resolving cross-team design conflicts, and aligning engineering efforts with company strategy.
  • Lead AI-native engineering practices for Devices Cloud: architect agentic workflows, codify patterns for AI-assisted spec writing, code generation, test coverage, and incident response — and partner with org leadership to extend these playbooks broadly.
  • Partner with firmware, mobile, product, and platform teams to define APIs, integration standards, and device-driven workflows that translate cleanly across the hardware-software boundary.
  • Drive the architecture and delivery of large-scale, cross-team initiatives — from conception through production — managing dependencies, unblocking teams, and maintaining accountability for outcomes.
  • Anticipate system bottlenecks, failure modes, and security risks before they materialize; define safeguards and engineering standards that prevent class-of-problem recurrences.
  • Mentor and grow Staff and Senior engineers across the team: provide architectural guidance, conduct high-quality technical reviews, and act as a force multiplier for team output.
  • Collaborate with engineering and product leadership to influence organizational priorities, advocate for technical investments, and communicate technical strategy to executive stakeholders.
  • Represent the team in cross-functional forums; produce clear, concise architectural documentation and roadmap artifacts accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Participate in on-call rotation and lead high-severity incident response, including post-mortems and systemic remediation.

What We're Looking For

  • 12+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale backend or cloud infrastructure systems — with a strong preference for IoT, telematics, or hardware-adjacent domains.
  • Demonstrated track record of setting technical direction across teams, driving architectural decisions, and aligning engineering roadmaps with business goals.
  • Deep expertise with cloud-native infrastructure (AWS: EKS, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, Kinesis, etc.), distributed systems design, and high-throughput data pipelines.
  • Strong hands-on experience with agentic AI workflows — not just prompt engineering, but architecting multi-agent systems, managing context, and building AI-native development practices at a team or org level.
  • Proven ability to mentor Staff and Senior engineers, elevate team-wide engineering standards, and drive cultural change through influence rather than authority.
  • Exceptional communication skills: able to distill complex architectural concepts for diverse audiences, from junior engineers to executive leadership.
  • Ability to navigate ambiguity, manage competing priorities across groups, and lead through influence in a cross-functional environment.
  • Experience with high-frequency ingest systems, time-series data, and streaming platforms (Kafka, Kinesis, or similar).
  • Bachelor’s Degree in a Technical field, or equivalent experience.

Nice-to-Have

  • Experience with IoT, telematics, embedded, or firmware-adjacent systems.
  • Background in SRE practices, reliability engineering, and progressive delivery.
  • Familiarity with observability platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, DataDog).
  • Experience contributing to industry conversations: open-source projects, conference talks, or technical publications.
  • Knowledge of hardware/firmware communication protocols (MQTT, BLE, CoAP, etc.).

AI-Native Expectations 

We use AI coding tools as a professional standard on this team. Here's what that means in practice:

  • Daily use: You use AI coding assistants (we support Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot) for real, substantive tasks: analysis, coding, refactoring, testing, navigating codebases, and documentation. Not just research or autocomplete.
  • Judgment and ownership: AI-generated code gets the same review you'd give any PR. You are accountable for everything you ship.
  • Velocity: We expect senior engineers who use AI well to operate with meaningful leverage — doing more with the same time, taking on problems that would otherwise require a larger team.
  • Team leadership: You share what works. You automate prompting strategies that others can build on and help teammates earlier in their AI workflow adoption get up to speed.
  • Continuous learning: The tooling is changing fast. You stay current and bring recommendations to the team when something would meaningfully improve how we work.

Our Benefits

  • Competitive pay and benefits
  • Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance plans (US and Canada)
  • 401(k) plan with company matching (US) / RRSP with DPSP matching (Canada)
  • Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental well-being
  • Flexible PTO, plus several company-wide days off throughout the year
  • Winter and Summer week-long synchronized company shutdowns
  • Learning & Development programs
  • Equipment, tools, and reimbursement support for a productive remote environment
  • Free Life360 Platinum Membership for your preferred circle
  • Free Tile Products

Life360 Values

Our company’s mission-driven culture is guided by our shared values to create a trusted work environment where you can bring your authentic self to work and make a positive difference.

  • Be a Good Person — We have a team of high-integrity people you can trust.
  • Be Direct With Respect — We communicate directly, even when it’s hard.
  • Members Before Metrics — We focus on building an exceptional experience for families.
  • High Intensity, High Impact — We do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Our Commitment to Diversity

We believe that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better results. Together, we continue to build an inclusive culture that encourages, supports, and celebrates the diverse voices of our employees. It fuels our innovation and connects us closer to our customers and the communities we serve. We strive to create a workplace that reflects the communities we serve and where everyone feels empowered to bring their authentic best selves to work.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at Life360. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any legally protected status.

We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. We believe that a diversity of perspectives and experiences create a foundation for the best ideas. Come join us in building something meaningful. Even if you don’t meet 100% of the above qualifications, you should still seriously consider applying!

 

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