Smartcar is on a mission to simplify how people securely connect their favorite apps and services to their cars. We build developer-friendly vehicle APIs so businesses can use a single integration to make their products available to cars across brands.
Founded in 2015, Smartcar has raised $36M from Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Energize Capital. We are now the leading developer platform for mobility businesses across North America and Europe, serving amazing customers such as Uber, Turo, NRG, Uplight, Emovis, and AutoNation.
Innovative mobility companies use our API platform to manage EV charging, verify mileage, issue digital car keys, monitor fleets, and much more.
We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our engineering team and provide technical leadership and strategic guidance across multiple engineering groups, including Core API and Async Streaming, the OEM Adapter Engineering Team, and the Developer Experience Team. In this role, you will collaborate with product, engineering, and architecture leaders to enhance Smartcar’s core platform, with a focus on reliability, scalability, performance, and customer-centric developer productivity.
As a technical leader, you will help design and architect solutions that uplevel the engineering team, improve the overall customer experience, and ensure seamless onboarding and API utilization for developers and engineers integrating with Smartcar.
Feel free to check out what our interview process looks like.
This role is remote within the United States. We’d love for you to join us!
Key Responsibilities
- High quality code practices: Set the standard and demonstrate high quality coding practices for major features and system changes.
- Architectural Leadership: Provide high-level architectural direction to ensure scalability, performance, and reliability across the Core API, Developer Experience and OEM engineering teams.
- Async Streaming & Core API Guidance: Provide technical direction for the Core API team to build reliable, scalable systems that enable efficient utilization of OEM integrations for REST, real-time data streaming and event-based interactions for our customers.
- OEM Adapter Guidance: Work with the OEM Adapter Engineering team in creating efficient, secure, and robust integrations with vehicle manufacturers (OEM’s), ensuring compatibility and smooth operation with our platform.
- Customer-focused Developer Experience: Work closely with the Developer Experience team to design tools, documentation, and workflows that improve the onboarding process and overall experience for external developers integrating with the Smartcar API platform.
- Mentorship & Leadership: Mentor engineers across teams, fostering technical excellence and a customer-first mindset. Help guide team members through complex engineering challenges while promoting best practices.
- Process Improvement: Identify opportunities to enhance development workflows, architecture, and customer-facing processes, with a focus on reducing friction for developers using our API platform.
- Performance & Scalability of our Infrastructure: Drive initiatives that improve the performance, reliability, and scalability of our APIs and services, ensuring they meet the evolving needs of our customers and business.
- Innovation & Best Practices: Stay updated on the latest technologies and industry trends, and advocate for the adoption of tools and techniques that improve both engineering efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Who You Are
- 15+ years of software engineering experience with a strong background in distributed systems, APIs, and event-driven architectures.
- Proven experience as a technical leader, providing architectural guidance and influencing cross-functional teams.
- Expertise in building and maintaining high-performance, scalable APIs and streaming systems.
- Strong understanding of cloud platforms, microservices architecture, and asynchronous communication patterns.
- Hands-on experience with programming languages such as Javascript and Python with proficiency in other relevant languages.
- Experience working with event-based architectures (Kinesis, SQS, Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar), streaming platforms, and RESTful APIs.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work across multiple teams and disciplines.
- Proven track record of mentoring engineers and guiding teams through complex technical challenges.
Bonus
- Familiarity with automotive or IoT integrations is a plus.
- Experience with OEM vehicle data integrations and automotive protocols.
- Strong background in improving developer onboarding and API utilization for external customers.
- Experience with cloud platforms specifically AWS and CI/CD pipelines.
- Prior experience working in high-growth B2B SaaS companies.
Manager
- Ashwin Kumar, Sr. Director of Engineering
Your Team
- Steve Peck, CTO
- Robert Simari
- Adrian Garcia
- Bharath Gunasekaran
- Aytekin Ozdemir
- Brandon Rothweiler
- Edward Kelly
- Nathan Bryant
- Mantej Dheri
- Jacob Smith
- Josh Bowers
- Haig Hovsepian
- Mike Hertz
- Edwin
Compensation and Benefits Package
- Base salary determined by years of experience: $180,000 - $225,000.
- Equity.
- Remote work within the United States.
- Health, Dental and Vision covered at 90% for all plans and 80% coverage for dependents, which amounts to approximately 11 thousand dollars a year.
- 401K matching at 4%.
- Unlimited PTO.
- Wellness stipend of $50 a month.
- Cell phone and Internet stipend of $50 a month.
- $300 yearly learning and development stipend.
- $350 work-from-home stipend.
- 8 weeks of 100% paid parental leave with an additional 4 weeks unpaid, 1-week half day ramp back time and a 5 week Factor subscription.
- 10 days of paid bereavement leave.
Expected Hours
- You are free to work standard work hours for your time zone. One important note: Most of the team is based on the west coast therefore please expect to be available between the hours of 9AM and 4PM PT for outreach or meetings. We will do our best to ensure meetings are not late in your evening, but will not always be able to do so
Sponsorship
- We do not currently support any new sponsorship opportunities or sponsorship transfers for this role
Recruiter For This Role
- Jackie Leary
Smartcar is an equal opportunity employer. If you require accommodations for a disability or special need during the interview process, please contact us at [email protected]. We're here to ensure your comfort and provide reasonable support.
Top Skills
What We Do
While software has disrupted every other industry for more than a decade, innovation in the mobility space is still surprisingly slow. Today, 80% of cars sold in the U.S. feature built-in internet access, but the software and APIs that would allow apps to communicate with those cars are still fragmented and proprietary to each car brand.
Smartcar is leading the way to open up access to those APIs, powering a new community of innovators in the mobility space. Auto insurance providers use our platform to verify their customers’ mileage and charge lower premiums. Governments implement ways to tax drivers more fairly. Car sharing businesses offer contactless rentals with digital keys. EV charging networks make owning electric vehicles more convenient and affordable. Electric utility providers manage their customers’ EVs to balance the grid and prevent power outages.
By making it easy to connect to their customers’ vehicles, Smartcar allows businesses to focus on what’s important: building the future of mobility
Why Work With Us
We are fully remote across all 50 states; At Smartcar, we promote a strong work-life-balance and friendly culture that supports autonomy to work within your time zone. Join our team and find an opportunity to have a direct impact building the API for cars.
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