Viam is the engineering platform for robotics and automation, empowering developers, startups, and enterprises to build, deploy, and scale—from prototype to production. Our platform makes robotics development accessible to software engineers, removing traditional barriers to building production-grade automation. We're also pioneering surface finishing automation for marine manufacturing, with solutions for robotic sanding that automate critical processes in roles that are physically demanding, safety-critical, and hard to fill. We were founded in 2020 by former MongoDB co-founder and CTO Eliot Horowitz, Viam is headquartered in New York City.
Senior/Staff Software Engineer (Backend), Motion
As a Senior/Staff Software Engineer in the Motion org, you will build services that enable robots to move intelligently in 3D and 2D space. The Motion org owns a state-of-the-art robotics motion stack that powers everything from our production robotic sanding systems to more general motion planning and execution across industries.
Within Motion there are three teams: Motion Planning, Motion Execution, and Surface Finishing. You would join the Surface Finishing group, which focuses on high-precision, contact-rich applications such as sanding on complex fiberglass and other surfaces. The team combines real-time 3D perception with motion planning and control to adapt to parts of varying size, shape, and quality, and to deliver reliable results in real production environments.
We’re solving challenging problems that live at the intersection of software and the physical world. This is far from a solved problem in our industry, and this team develops algorithmic solutions of high complexity that need to perform across a wide variety of hardware and environments.
Our current tech stack centers on Go, running on a range of hardware from edge devices to powerful workstations. This is a hybrid role in which you’ll be in the NYC office 3+ days a week
You'll be:
- Designing and building backend services that power our motion and surface finishing stack
- Solving new and unique problems in robotics and deploying applications for real-world impact
- Helping turn lab-prototype solutions into factory-ready products that deliver tangible value for our customers
- Building and testing on physical robots
- Collaborating closely with teams across motion planning, motion execution, and perception
We're looking for someone who:
- Cares deeply about writing performant, scalable, and maintainable code
- Has engineered concurrent and parallel systems to handle high volume data
- Has developed backend systems in Go (preferred) or C++
- Has an affinity for complex, sophisticated problems, and loves solving them with practical solutions
- Is experienced taking projects from problem formulation through implementation and deployment
- Can adapt coding style from prototype to production-grade
- Wants to work with physical hardware
Bonus points if you have:
- Written motion algorithms for the physical world and understand the constraints of real-world execution
- Experience with motion planning, trajectory generation, or control in contact-rich tasks such as machining, sanding, polishing, or assembly
- Experience productionizing code in the context of hardware or embedded systems
The starting salary for this role is $180,000/year.
Viam’s base salary range for this role is posted above. 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. 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
- Vision Driven
- Collaborate Openly
- Act Decisively
- Succeed Through Diversity
- Hold Ourselves Accountable
- Lead with Curiosity
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What We Do
Robotics has the potential to do so much good, but progress has been slowed by complicated hardware and software integrations, long development cycles, and people's fear of tripping over a robot on their way to work.
At Viam, we’re addressing these issues by building a novel robotics platform that relies on standardized building blocks rather than custom code to create, configure and control robots quickly and intuitively. We’re empowering engineers - aspiring and experienced - across industries to solve complicated automation problems with our innovative and developer-friendly software tools.
If you are interested in learning more, apply to one of our many open positions. We are hiring!
