Staff Software Engineer, Developer Productivity

| San Francisco, CA, USA | Hybrid
Employer Provided Salary: 166,600-245,000 Annually
Salary data is provided by the employer. Please note this is not a guarantee of compensation.
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We're Cruise, a self-driving service designed for the cities we love.

We’re building the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles to safely connect people to the places, things, and experiences they care about. We believe self-driving vehicles will help save lives, reshape cities, give back time in transit, and restore freedom of movement for many.

In our cars, you’re free to be yourself. It’s the same here at Cruise. We’re creating a culture that values the experiences and contributions of all of the unique individuals who collectively make up Cruise, so that every employee can do their best work. 

Cruise is committed to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment, both in our workplace and in our products. If you are looking to play a part in making a positive impact in the world by advancing the revolutionary work of self-driving cars, come join us. Even if you might not meet every requirement, we strongly encourage you to apply. You might just be the right candidate for us.

Background: The developer productivity organization is responsible for delivering and maintaining the tools and services engineers here at Cruise use every day to do their best work and drive our cars forward. Tools and services we work on enhance the entire development process of engineers at Cruise — how/where code is checked out, modified, compiled, tested, merged, and eventually deployed. Our goal is to ensure our AV engineers and others here have world class tools and a seamless development experience so that they can focus on the problems that matter most in their domain.

Mission: To improve the developer productivity of engineers at Cruise through tools and services that streamline/automate their development workflows.

Role: We are looking for a Staff Engineer with an extensive engineering background, experience using a variety of developer tools and technologies, and who is passionate about developer productivity. As a leader on this team, we are looking for someone who cares deeply about the technical development of other engineers on the team and is able to effectively balance the needs and priorities of the business, our users, and the growth of our engineers.

The way this engineer will deliver impact may vary depending on the situation but they will be expected to be able to identify how they can best have impact with minimal guidance.

What you’ll be doing:

  • Identify engineering pain points and propose/design/implement solutions that are reliable, scalable, and maintainable
  • Influence the team’s technical roadmap
  • Evaluate new tools and technologies through PoCs
  • Ship improvements to our AV development toolchains and services which have a measurable and direct impact on engineering productivity and our core company metrics
  • Drive software engineering best practices both within your team and across the company, and create tooling which encourages these
  • Help steer the engineering culture on the team
  • Guide the team to find the right balance between delivering impact and addressing technical debt
  • Mentor and grow engineers on the team and across the organization
  • Set the example for high levels of accountability
  • Execute and deliver impact both individually and through the team
  • Set strong boundaries when selecting external requests and pushing back on requests that do not align with our team vision

Relevant Technologies:

  • GoLang
  • Python
  • gRPC
  • SSH
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • Linux
  • Buildkite
  • GCP
  • OpenTelemetry

What you must have:

  • 7+ years experience designing, building and operating production systems at scale in the cloud.
  • Experience designing highly scalable, reliable, and maintainable services.
  • Experience writing Go, Python, or other language at production scale
  • Understanding of Unix/Linux, SSH, and networking fundamentals
  • Attention to detail, and a desire to improve processes and systems around you
  • Ability to lead and influence others, both internal and external to the team
  • Ability to research, document, communicate, and defend proposals and take critical feedback
  • Ability to effectively make trade-offs and communicate the reasoning
  • Ability to manage competing priorities, focus on shipping, and work effectively under pressure
  • Passion for mentoring and growing junior developers
  • Passion for self-driving technology and its potential impact on the world

Bonus Points!

  • Experience working with GCP
  • Experience working with Docker and Kubernetes
  • Experience owning or contributing to Open Source projects


The salary range for this position is $166,600 - $245,000. Compensation will vary depending on location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. You may also be offered a bonus, long-term incentives, and benefits. These ranges are subject to change.

Why Cruise?

Our benefits are here to support the whole you:

  • Competitive salary and benefits 
  • Medical / dental / vision, Life and AD&D
  • Subsidized mental health benefits
  • Paid time off and holidays
  • Paid parental, medical, family care, and military leave of absence
  • 401(k) Cruise matching program 
  • Fertility benefits
  • Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account
  • Flexible Spending Account & Health Saving Account
  • Perks Wallet program for benefits/perks
  • Pre-tax Commuter benefit plan for local employees
  • CruiseFlex, our location-flexible work policy. (Learn more about CruiseFlex).

We’re Integrated

  • Through our partnerships with General Motors and Honda, we are the only self-driving company with fully integrated manufacturing at scale.

We’re Funded

  • GM, Honda, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, and Walmart have invested billions in Cruise. Their backing for our technology demonstrates their confidence in our progress, team, and vision and makes us one of the leading autonomous vehicle organizations in the industry. Our deep resources greatly accelerate our operating speed.

Cruise LLC is an equal opportunity employer. We strive to create a supportive and inclusive workplace where contributions are valued and celebrated, and our employees thrive by being themselves and are inspired to do the best work of their lives. We seek applicants of all backgrounds and identities, across race, color, caste, ethnicity, national origin or ancestry, age, citizenship, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or parental status, or disability. Applicants will not be discriminated against based on these or other protected categories or social identities. Cruise will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, in accordance with applicable laws.

Cruise is committed to the full inclusion of all applicants. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process please let our recruiting team know or email [email protected].

We proactively work to design hiring processes that promote equity and inclusion while mitigating bias. To help us track the effectiveness and inclusivity of our recruiting efforts, please consider answering the following demographic questions. Answering these questions is entirely voluntary. Your answers to these questions will not be shared with the hiring decision makers and will not impact the hiring decision in any way. Instead, Cruise will use this information not only to comply with any government reporting obligations but also to track our progress toward meeting our diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging objectives.

Candidates applying for roles that operate and remotely operate the AV: Licensed to drive a motor vehicle in the U.S. for the three years immediately preceding your application, currently holding an active in-state regular driver’s license or equivalent, and no more than one point on driving record. A successful completion of a background check, drug screen and DMV Motor Vehicle Record check is also required.

Note to Recruitment Agencies: Cruise does not accept unsolicited agency resumes. Furthermore, Cruise does not pay placement fees for candidates submitted by any agency other than its approved partners. 

More Information on Cruise
Cruise operates in the Artificial Intelligence industry. The company is located in San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA, Phoenix, AZ and Sunnyvale, CA. Cruise was founded in 2013. It has 2500 total employees. It offers perks and benefits such as Volunteer in local community, Partners with nonprofits, OKR operational model, Team based strategic planning, Open office floor plan and Flexible work schedule. To see all 50 open jobs at Cruise, click here.
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