Senior Software Engineer - API Platform

Job Title: Senior Software Engineer
Department: Software Engineering
Job Level: L5
FLSA: Exempt

Job Summary:

In this senior-level role, you will be instrumental in defining and implementing the technical vision for scalable API services that support cutting-edge robotics applications. You will lead complex projects, contribute to architectural decisions, and mentor engineers, while directly shaping the way robotic capabilities are exposed to developers through robust, secure, and reliable APIs and SDKs. 

By abstracting away low-level robot complexity, our API Platform allows internal and external developers to build, scale, and deploy robotics solutions across diverse industries - from restaurants and hotels to warehouses and manufacturing environments. Your systems thinking, backend expertise, and passion for developer experience will play a key role in accelerating robotics innovation in the real world. 

Key Duties/Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership

• Provide hands-on technical leadership to a high-impact API Platform team.
• Mentor and coach junior engineers, encouraging continuous learning and development.
• Promote engineering best practices, quality, and a culture of technical excellence.

System Design & Architecture

• Contribute to the architecture of scalable, versioned REST and gRPC APIs in Go.
• Design intuitive and maintainable API contracts that expose real-time robot capabilities and telemetry.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (robotics, infrastructure, product) to ensure cohesive system architecture and performance.

Software Development

• Develop and maintain backend services and SDKs (initially in Go, Python, and TypeScript).
• Write efficient, reliable, and idiomatic code, following company coding standards.
• Translate low-level hardware commands into clean, high-level API interfaces.
• Own the full API lifecycle—from specification and development to production rollout and continuous improvement.

Project Ownership

• Lead end-to-end delivery of critical platform services and developer tools.
• Define project goals, scope, and timelines, coordinating closely with cross-functional partners.
• Drive API adoption and iterate based on developer feedback and real-world telemetry.

Technical Strategy

• Influence API strategy, developer platform direction, and long-term service design.
• Stay current with emerging technologies, API trends, and DX improvements.
• Recommend tools, frameworks, and process enhancements to improve delivery velocity and code quality.

Reliability & Observability

• Instrument and monitor production systems with metrics, logging, and distributed tracing.
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines, contract testing, and one-click deployments.
• Participate in on-call rotation to support service availability and performance.

Problem Solving & Troubleshooting

• Debug and resolve complex software defects and production issues.
• Analyze root causes and contribute to robust, long-term solutions.
• Conduct post-mortems and contribute to continuous reliability improvements.

Collaboration & Communication

• Align stakeholders around elegant yet pragmatic API contracts.
• Collaborate across teams to prioritize work and communicate progress.
• Write design documents, RFCs, and contribute to internal technical discussions.

Quality Assurance

• Establish and advocate for testing best practices and automation.
• Ensure backward compatibility, versioning strategies, and robust SDK ergonomics.
• Participate in and lead code reviews and design reviews.

Documentation & Knowledge Sharing

• Write and maintain technical documentation including OpenAPI/Protobuf specs, developer guides, and tutorials.
• Share context through lunch-and-learns, internal demos, and mentorship.
• Drive knowledge-sharing initiatives within the engineering organization.

Additional Responsibilities

• Performs other duties or takes on specialized responsibilities as assigned.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• None

Required Skills/Abilities/Qualifications: 

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience (or equivalent impact), with a strong focus on API design and distributed systems.
• Strong proficiency in Go or similar modern backend languages (e.g., Python, TypeScript, Java, C++).
• Deep understanding of networking, concurrency, performance tuning, and system architecture.
• Experience designing and deploying production-grade APIs (REST and/or gRPC), including versioning, idempotency, pagination, and contract enforcement.
• Proficiency with CI/CD systems, Docker/Kubernetes, cloud platforms, and infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform.
• Familiarity with observability stacks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, distributed tracing).
• Ability to lead complex technical projects independently and collaboratively.

Preferred Skills/Abilities/Qualifications: 

• Experience in developer platform work: creating SDKs, improving DX, writing tutorials/examples.
• Strong consumer of APIs; continuously learns and incorporates best practices from the industry.
• Experience using the Linux terminal and operating in Unix-based environments.
• Comfortable working in fast-moving, ambiguous environments with a bias for incremental delivery.

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Advanced degrees or equivalent experience in robotics-related or API-focused software development are a plus.

Physical Requirements: 

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Prolonged periods of sitting/standing at a desk and working on a computer. The employee routinely is required to sit; stand, walk; talk and hear; use hands to keyboard
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.
• Ability to lift 30 lbs. 

Bear Robotics, Inc. is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state or federal law or local ordinance.

The pay range for this position is $174K - $218K + discretionary annual performance bonus . Pay is dependent on the applicant's relevant experience.