Senior/Staff Software Engineer (Backend), Motion

Viam helps companies unlock the power of AI, data and automation in the physical world. We provide a single platform for engineers of all disciplines to solve problems together and build solutions that are fast and future-proof. Viam powers solutions across robotics, food and beverage, climate tech, marine, industrial manufacturing, and more. Founded in 2020 by former MongoDB co-founder and CTO Eliot Horowitz, Viam is headquartered in New York City.

Senior/Staff Software Engineer (Backend), Motion

As a Senior/Staff Software Engineer in the Motion org, you will build services that enable robots to move intelligently in 3D and 2D space. The Motion org owns a state-of-the-art robotics motion stack that powers everything from our production robotic sanding systems to more general motion planning and execution across industries.

Within Motion there are three teams: Motion Planning, Motion Execution, and Surface Finishing. You would join the Surface Finishing group, which focuses on high-precision, contact-rich applications such as sanding on complex fiberglass and other surfaces. The team combines real-time 3D perception with motion planning and control to adapt to parts of varying size, shape, and quality, and to deliver reliable results in real production environments.

We’re solving challenging problems that live at the intersection of software and the physical world. This is far from a solved problem in our industry, and this team develops algorithmic solutions of high complexity that need to perform across a wide variety of hardware and environments.

Our current tech stack centers on Go, running on a range of hardware from edge devices to powerful workstations. This is a hybrid role in which you’ll be in the NYC office 3+ days a week

You'll be:

• Designing and building backend services that power our motion and surface finishing stack
• Solving new and unique problems in robotics and deploying applications for real-world impact
• Helping turn lab-prototype solutions into factory-ready products that deliver tangible value for our customers
• Building and testing on physical robots
• Collaborating closely with teams across motion planning, motion execution, and perception

We're looking for someone who:

• Cares deeply about writing performant, scalable, and maintainable code
• Has engineered concurrent and parallel systems to handle high volume data 
• Has developed backend systems in Go (preferred) or C++
• Has an affinity for complex, sophisticated problems, and loves solving them with practical solutions
• Is experienced taking projects from problem formulation through implementation and deployment
• Can adapt coding style from prototype to production-grade
• Wants to work with physical hardware

Bonus points if you have:

• Written motion algorithms for the physical world and understand the constraints of real-world execution
• Experience with motion planning, trajectory generation, or control in contact-rich tasks such as machining, sanding, polishing, or assembly
• Experience productionizing code in the context of hardware or embedded systems

The starting salary for this role is $180,000/year.