
Staff Engineer, Map Rendering Engine
About This Role
Strava is the app for active people. With over 150 million athletes in more than 185 countries, Strava is where connection, motivation, and personal bests thrive. No matter your activity, gear, or goals, we help you find your crew, crush your milestones, and keep moving forward. Start your journey with Strava today.
Our mission is simple: to motivate people to live their best active lives. We believe in the power of movement to connect and drive people forward.
Our engineering organization is looking for a motivated and experienced Graphics and Rendering engineer at Staff level to join Strava’s mobile teams in Europe. A Staff Engineer at Strava is an Individual Contributor in a technical leadership position and part of Strava’s Staff group. You will lead technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and drive critical architectural decisions in our cutting-edge Map Rendering Engine (MRE) platform.
Leveraging your deep expertise in graphics, rendering techniques, and performant C++ development, you will shape the future of map experiences for millions of users worldwide.
We follow a flexible hybrid model that generally translates to around half your time on-site in our Berlin office—roughly three days per week.
What You’ll Do:
- Providing technical leadership that enhances and optimizes performance, visual quality, and reliability of our Map Rendering Engine.
- Driving the design, implementation, and improvement of advanced graphics algorithms and GPU-accelerated rendering techniques with a strong emphasis on research and innovation.
- Leading large-scale engineering projects, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams to ensure architectural consistency and maintainability.
- Collaborate with all members of the Map Rendering Engine team, be that fellow engineers, cartography designers, product managers, researchers and analysts, to identify and execute on opportunities to further extend Strava’s best in class map offering.
- Mentoring engineers through code reviews, pair programming, technical guidance, and knowledge-sharing sessions.
- Setting and clearly communicating the long-term technical vision and strategy for the Map Rendering Engine to stakeholders.
What You’ll Bring to the Team:
- Have extensive experience as a Staff Engineer with a proven track record in graphics programming, real-time rendering, and performance optimization.
- Have deep knowledge of modern programming standards, GPU programming (e.g., Vulkan, OpenGL, Metal), and graphics APIs.
- Excel at identifying and solving complex architectural problems with scalable and sustainable solutions.
- Are a skilled communicator and collaborator who effectively aligns diverse teams toward shared technical goals.
- Are passionate about continuous learning and staying current with the latest advancements in graphics technology and rendering techniques.
Qualifications:
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with significant emphasis on graphics and rendering-focused projects.
- Demonstrated experience in a senior or staff engineering role, leading technical initiatives and mentoring engineers.
- Deep familiarity with rendering pipeline optimization, shader programming and performance profiling tools.
- Strong experience working in collaborative, agile development environments.
- Proficiency in C++.
Bonus Points:
- Experience with mapping technologies, geospatial data, or GIS systems.
- Contributions to open-source graphics/rendering projects or involvement in graphics community events.
Compensation Overview:
At Strava, we know our employees are the most important ingredient to our success, and our compensation and total rewards programs reflect that. We take a market-based approach to pay, and pay may vary depending on the department and your location. Salary ranges are categorized into one of three tiers based on a cost of labor index for that geographic area. We will determine the candidate’s starting pay based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. We may modify these ranges in the future. For more information, please contact your talent partner.
Compensation: €130,000 - €160,000. The base salary posted is within the compensation range for this role. This range reflects base pay only and does not include equity or benefits. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.
For more information on benefits, please click here.
Why Join Us?
Movement brings us together. At Strava, we’re building the world’s largest community of active people, helping them stay motivated and achieve their goals.
Our global team is passionate about making movement fun, meaningful, and accessible to everyone. Whether you’re shaping the technology, growing our community, or driving innovation, your work at Strava makes an impact.
When you join Strava, you’re not just joining a company—you’re joining a movement. If you’re ready to bring your energy, ideas, and drive, let’s build something incredible together.
Strava builds software that makes the best part of our athletes’ days even better. Just as we’re deeply committed to unlocking their potential, we’re dedicated to providing a world-class, inclusive workplace where our employees can grow and thrive, too. We’re backed by Sequoia Capital, TCV, Madrone Partners and Jackson Square Ventures, and we’re expanding in order to exceed the needs of our growing community of global athletes. Our culture reflects our community. We are continuously striving to hire and engage teammates from all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives because we know we are a stronger team together.
Strava is an equal opportunity employer. In keeping with the values of Strava, we make all employment decisions including hiring, evaluation, termination, promotional and training opportunities, without regard to race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, physical handicap, mental disability, medical condition, disability, gender or identity or expression, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, marital status, height and/or weight.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
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