Principal Architect, Product Engineering

Niantic Spatial; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 275,000 - 310,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity

Medical/dental/vision coverage

401(k)

Job summary

Niantic Spatial in San Francisco, CA is seeking a Principal Architect to lead the technical strategy for the Product Engineering ecosystem, shaping long-term architecture while contributing production code. This hands-on role requires mentoring senior engineers, aligning with Product, Research, Design, and Security to deliver a cohesive platform with scalable, secure, and maintainable systems.

You will drive architecture reviews, set standards, and partner with Product to translate vision into

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience designing and building large-scale software systems.
• Demonstrated success defining architecture across multiple products, services, and engineering teams.
• Deep experience designing distributed systems, cloud-native services, APIs, and developer platforms.
• Strong software engineering background with experience contributing production code in complex systems.
• Expertise in modern software architecture, system design, and engineering best practices.
• Experience partnering closely with product organizations to shape technical strategy around customer outcomes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the long-term technical architecture for the Product Engineering ecosystem.
• Ensure products, services, SDKs, and applications share consistent architectural patterns and engineering principles.
• Balance short-term product delivery with long-term platform health and maintainability.
• Drive architectural decisions that improve scalability, reliability, security, developer experience, and operational simplicity.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud-native services

APIs

Developer platforms

Leadership

Mentoring

Architecture

Technical strategy

Tools

Google Cloud Platform

Amazon Web Services

REST APIs

Job description

About Niantic Spatial

At Niantic Spatial, we're building the future of physical AI. Powered by a proprietary database of over 30 billion posed images, our groundbreaking mapping technology unlocks a new dimension of interaction and spatial intelligence that helps both humans and machines better understand, represent, navigate, and engage with the real environment.

Our reconstruction technology captures environments with geometric accuracy and extreme detail from any standard camera, and our Visual Positioning System delivers precise positioning almost anywhere in the world. We serve customers across robotics, the public sector, and energy and industrial markets — building for the 80% of economic activity that takes place beyond our screens.

About the Role

The Principal Architect is the technical steward for the Product Engineering organization. This role will be responsible for ensuring that every product, platform, API, SDK, and service fits together into a cohesive, scalable ecosystem. This is one of the most senior individual contributor roles within Product Engineering. Reporting to the Senior Director of Product Engineering, you will serve as a technical partner in defining the long-term architecture of Niantic Spatial's product platform while remaining actively engaged in the implementation and evolution of the technology.

This is a hands-on engineering role - not a traditional enterprise architecture function. You will participate in architecture reviews, prototype complex solutions, contribute production code where it matters most, and mentor senior engineers. You will work closely with Product Management, Research, Engineering, and Design to ensure technical decisions advance the company's product vision while maintaining architectural consistency across the platform. Success here requires understanding not only how systems should be built, but why.

Organizational Scope

The Principal Architect provides technical leadership across the entire Product Engineering organization, including the Product Foundations Team, SDK, Mobile Engineering, Web Engineering, and Delivery. The role partners closely with Research to guide the transition of new technologies into scalable, production-ready products.

What You'll Do

Technical Strategy

• Define and evolve the long-term technical architecture for the Product Engineering ecosystem.
• Ensure products, services, SDKs, and applications share consistent architectural patterns and engineering principles.
• Balance short-term product delivery with long-term platform health and maintainability.
• Drive architectural decisions that improve scalability, reliability, security, developer experience, and operational simplicity.

Product Partnership

• Partner closely with Product Management to understand product strategy and ensure technical investments support long-term customer value.
• Collaborate with Research to evaluate emerging technologies and define clear paths to productization.
• Help translate product vision into technical roadmaps and implementation strategies.

Architecture Leadership

• Lead architecture reviews across Product Engineering.
• Establish engineering standards, design principles, and reference architectures.
• Guide system decomposition, API design, data architecture, integration patterns, and platform evolution.
• Ensure architectural consistency across cloud services, APIs, web applications, mobile applications, and native SDKs.

Hands-On Engineering

• Design and prototype complex technical solutions.
• Contribute production code in areas of strategic importance.
• Review critical designs and implementation approaches.
• Mentor senior engineers and technical leads on architecture, software design, and engineering best practices.
• Assist engineering teams in solving difficult cross-cutting technical challenges.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Build strong technical partnerships across Engineering, Research, Product, Design, Security, Infrastructure, and Delivery.
• Facilitate technical alignment across multiple engineering teams.
• Identify opportunities to simplify systems, reduce technical debt, and improve developer productivity.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to Product Engineering leadership.

What You'll Bring

• 15+ years of software engineering experience designing and building large-scale software systems.
• Demonstrated success defining architecture across multiple products, services, and engineering teams.
• Deep experience designing distributed systems, cloud-native services, APIs, and developer platforms.
• Strong software engineering background with experience contributing production code in complex systems.
• Expertise in modern software architecture, system design, and engineering best practices.
• Experience partnering closely with product organizations to shape technical strategy around customer outcomes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.

Nice to Have

• Experience building developer platforms, SDKs, or API ecosystems.
• Experience productizing research-driven technologies.
• Background in computer vision, spatial computing, AR/VR, robotics, or edge computing.
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform, distributed data systems, identity platforms, and modern web architectures.
• Experience designing systems spanning cloud services, web applications, mobile applications, and native runtimes.
• Experience with AI-assisted software development and agentic engineering workflows.

Core Technologies

• Distributed systems · Google Cloud Platform · Amazon Web Services · REST APIs
• TypeScript / Node.js · C++ · Swift · Kotlin
• PostgreSQL / Spanner · Identity and Access Management
• Mobile and native SDK architecture · Computer vision and spatial computing
• Cloud architecture · System design · AI-assisted software development

What Success Looks Like

• Product Engineering delivers a cohesive platform rather than a collection of independent products.
• Technical decisions consistently reinforce the company's product vision.
• New technologies from Research integrate naturally into the existing ecosystem.
• Teams share common architectural patterns, reducing duplication and improving maintainability.
• Engineers move quickly because the platform is consistent, well understood, and intentionally designed.

Compensation & Benefits

The expected salary range for this role is $275,000 – $310,000 per year. Compensation also includes an annual bonus, equity, and a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k), and more.

Location & Work Model

This role is based in our San Francisco, CA office on a hybrid schedule with a minimum of 3 days per week in office.

Inclusive Application

We know the strongest candidates don't always tick every box. If you're excited about this role and believe you could do it well, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn't match every qualification listed — you may be exactly who we're looking for.

Equal Opportunity

Niantic Spatial is an equal opportunity employer. Individuals seeking employment at Niantic Spatial are considered without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, age, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military or veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected category under applicable laws. Niantic Spatial will also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in accordance with applicable laws. Please contact your recruiter if you want to request an accommodation for the job application or interview process.

Candidate Privacy

I understand that by submitting my job application, the information I provide as part of that application will be used in accordance with Niantic Spatial's Privacy Notice for Job Applicants and Candidates https://www.nianticspatial.com/applicant-privacy-notice.