Lead Software Engineer, Data 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 Role

New York City (Hybrid 3+ days per week in office)

We are looking for a hands-on engineering manager to lead our Data/ML team. The role is responsible for developing engineers, driving execution, and making architectural decisions.

The Data/ML team owns the infrastructure that moves data from devices to the cloud and makes it usable across the Viam platform. On top of that foundation, the team also owns the ML infrastructure that turns that data into models: training workflows, labeling pipelines, and inference in both cloud and at the edge. 

The team works in Go and Python with a Svelte frontend, running ML workloads on GKE using TensorFlow, TFLite, and ONNX, with MongoDB Atlas, GCP, and Azure for the data layer. You will report to the VP of Engineering.

What You'll Own

Lead Engineers at Viam own problems from product design through production and play an active role in shaping how the platform evolves.

• Lead and develop a team of 5+ engineers: set direction, run planning, ship reliably, and grow the team through coaching, feedback, and performance conversations
• Write code and ship features alongside your team across the full stack, from backend infrastructure through UI
• Own the architecture of the data pipeline end to end, from device to cloud, including storage, querying, and the APIs that power the rest of the platform
• Drive the reliability and performance of ML training and inference infrastructure, from custom training workflows to the services that power auto-labeling and model evaluation
• Have opinions on what gets built and how users experience it, and bring those into product decisions early
• Own cross-team problems through to resolution, working closely with Computer Vision, Fleet Management, Mobile, and Solutions Engineering

What You Bring

We are looking for an experienced engineering manager who remains deeply technical, can develop engineers, and is comfortable setting direction while staying close to the code. Ideally you have:

• Led engineering teams through hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development
• Built and scaled backend, platform, or infrastructure systems in production
• Shipped products across APIs, backend services, and user interfaces
• Made sound architectural decisions and navigated tradeoffs around scale, reliability, and performance
• Influenced product and technical direction through strong judgment and execution
• Drove cross-functional projects from ambiguity to production
• Worked on distributed systems, data-intensive systems, streaming pipelines, platform infrastructure, or ML infrastructure

**Experience with robotics or IoT 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.