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Lead Software Engineer, Sensing Platform

New York, NY

About Viam 

Viam is building the platform that makes robotics as programmable as software. Our software allows developers and companies to configure, control, and manage physical devices—from a single robot in a lab to fleets of machines deployed in the real world.

The company was founded by Eliot Horowitz, co-founder and former CTO of MongoDB, with the goal of making it dramatically easier to build and operate systems that interact with the physical world.

Today Viam powers developers and organizations working across robotics, industrial automation, research, and connected devices. We’re a ~100-person company headquartered in New York City.

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 Sensing team owns the software that makes cameras and audio hardware work reliably on Viam — from the driver level up through streaming delivery to app.viam.com.

As the Lead, you'll manage a team of 4 engineers working across camera integration, streaming infrastructure, and audio, reporting directly to the VP of Engineering. 

Cameras are the starting point for most solutions built on the platform, making this team's work foundational for developers, startups, and enterprise customers building real-world automation. The team works primarily in C++ and Golang, collaborates closely with Motion, Vision, RDK, and Solutions Engineering.

Ownership spans three areas:

  • Audio. Expanding audio support in the platform, including text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and always-on processing for wake-word detection and sound-triggered actions. This work is active with a customer and touches ML pipelines alongside lower-level systems work.
  • Streaming infrastructure. Owning the full path from sensor to cloud — efficient pipelines with tight control over buffering, latency, and failure handling, and a WebRTC delivery layer with minimal encoding and decoding hops so users can pull a live feed directly in app.viam.com.
  • Camera and sensor pipelines. Integrating and stabilizing a wide range of hardware — depth cameras such as Realsense and Orbbec, RTSP streams, CSI cameras, and webcams — on Linux, macOS, and Windows, in customer environments that are often resource-constrained and difficult to reproduce locally.

What You'll Own

  • Managing a team of four engineers — clear priorities, career development, and making sure the team has what it needs to operate well
  • Owning the technical direction for the team — what gets prioritized, what gets cut, and the reasoning behind those calls
  • Architecting the streaming pipeline: WebRTC delivery, RTP efficiency, on-device buffering, and latency tradeoffs from capture to browser
  • Leading the audio work currently in production with a customer — wake-word detection, TTS/STT, sound-triggered actions — and making the technical calls as scope expands
  • Debugging complex issues that span C++ driver behavior, OS interactions, and customer hardware environments
  • Staying connected to Motion, Vision, and RDK so sensing work integrates cleanly — especially on projects that touch the frame system or motion planning

What You Bring

We're looking for an experienced, hands-on engineering lead with strong technical fundamentals who enjoys building systems and shipping production code. 

You may have experience with:

  • Team leadership — setting technical direction, owning decisions, and keeping a team of engineers moving
  • Building and debugging complex production systems — you go deep when the problem requires it, whether that's application code, OS behavior, or hardware interactions
  • Performance-sensitive or real-time systems — latency, buffering, data transport, or pipeline efficiency. Streaming, media, or WebRTC experience is a plus but not required
  • Cross-team technical work — resolving problems that span multiple systems or teams and keeping shared infrastructure aligned
  • Shipping under real constraints — sound judgment on tradeoffs, knowing when to go deep versus move fast, and owning outcomes end to end
  • Robotics, IoT, or embedded systems — useful context, not a requirement

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
  • 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 $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.

Full-time Benefits

Viam’s base salary range for this role is posted above. In addition to cash compensation, Viam offers a comprehensive Total Rewards package that includes equity grants, health benefits, and more.

  • 100% covered medical/dental/vision insurance plans, commuter benefits
  • 25 days paid vacation and generous holiday observances
  • Free lunch every day that you’re in the office
  • One Medical Membership
  • Citi Bike memberships
  • Monthly wellness stipend to be used for a variety of fitness-related items like gym memberships, fitness classes, fitness equipment, and more
  • Paid parental leave
  • Reproductive Health Benefits, including Fertility Benefits and Abortion Access Travel Benefits
  • Yearly Learning and Development Budget for your own personal learning goals

Values:

  • Vision Driven
  • Collaborate Openly
  • Act Decisively
  • Succeed Through Diversity
  • Hold Ourselves Accountable
  • Lead with Curiosity

To all recruitment agencies: 

Viam does not accept unsolicited agency resumes or calls from recruitment agencies or search firms. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias or Viam employees. Viam is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

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