Staff Software Engineer

Who We Are
Motive empowers the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable. For the first time ever, safety, operations and finance teams can manage their drivers, vehicles, equipment, and fleet related spend in a single system. Combined with industry leading AI, the Motive platform gives you complete visibility and control, and significantly reduces manual workloads by automating and simplifying tasks.

Motive serves nearly 100,000 customers – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses – across a wide range of industries, including transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, and the public sector.

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About The Role
At Motive, we're not just looking for engineers—we're seeking Superbuilders. As a Staff System Software Engineer, you will be at the forefront of designing and developing cutting-edge IoT platforms, turning ambitious visions into scalable, high-performance solutions. You thrive on solving complex technical challenges, mastering new technologies on the fly, and delivering pragmatic solutions that drive impact at scale.

This role offers the opportunity to influence technical stack decisions, shape the company's engineering roadmap, and work closely with the CTO. You will engage in high-impact workstreams with the freedom to innovate, taking ownership of projects across devices, cloud, and mobile platforms. If you are a self-starter with a data-driven mindset and an obsession for excellence, this is the role for you.

What You'll Be Doing

• Architect and Build: Design, develop, and optimize high-performance software and firmware for next-gen IoT platforms.
• Turn Vision into Reality: Collaborate with executive and product teams to translate abstract ideas into actionable engineering plans.
• Debug and Validate: Troubleshoot and optimize software on complex distributed systems, ensuring security, scalability, and resilience.
• Develop Automated Testing: Create data test driven end to end simulation frameworks to validate system integrity at scale.
• Adopt Cutting-Edge Tools: Leverage AI-powered coding tools to enhance productivity and drive innovation.
• Lead by Example: Act as a technical mentor, fostering a culture of excellence, ownership, and pragmatism across the engineering team.
• Iterate and Innovate: Embrace rapid iteration and experimentation, solving real-time problems and pivoting when necessary to achieve breakthrough results.

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of experience in software development, with deep expertise in either device, backend, cloud, or mobile platforms, and familiarity with others.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Proficiency in Golang, Kotlin, and C++, with a track record of writing elegant, maintainable, and high-performance code.
• Full Stack and Ecosystem understanding - from development and dependencies, modern best practices, to CI/CD understanding, cloud-native, and security-aware experience.
• Experience working with analytics and observability from client to cloud, such as Snowflake and Redash reporting, Grafana and Datadog metrics, and agent methodologies.
• A proven history of independent, ambitious project delivery in fast-paced environments.
• Ability to rapidly master new technologies and adapt to ambiguity, whether it's distributed systems including embedded devices, machine learning infrastructure, or front-end frameworks.
• A strategic problem-solver who balances technical trade-offs with business impact.
• Strong communication skills, capable of translating complex technical challenges into clear, actionable plans.
• A natural leader with the conviction to push for the right technical solutions and challenge the status quo.

Why Join Us?

This is more than just a job—it's a chance to build the future of IoT platforms at scale. You'll work on the toughest technical challenges with high visibility and impact, shaping the engineering direction of Motive. If you're a Superbuilder—a technical powerhouse who thrives under pressure, learns on the fly, and delivers game-changing solutions—we want to talk. Let's build something extraordinary together.

We are hiring in the following locations:
San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA, Austin TX, Nashville, TN and Buffalo, NY. This is a
hybrid role
, with the expectation of being in the office 1–2 days per week.

*Pay Transparency
Your compensation may be based on several factors, including education, work experience, and certifications. For certain roles, total compensation may include restricted stock units. Motive offers benefits including health, pharmacy, optical and dental care benefits, paid time off, sick time off, short term and long term disability coverage, life insurance as well as 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). Learn more about our benefits by visiting Motive Perks & Benefits.

The compensation range for this position will depend on where you reside. For this role, the compensation range is:*
United States

$148,000—$226,000 USD

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is one of Motive's core values. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives.
Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here .
UK Candidate Privacy Notice here.
The applicant must be authorized to receive and access those commodities and technologies controlled under U.S. Export Administration Regulations. It is Motive's policy to require that employees be authorized to receive access to Motive products and technology.