Staff Frontend Engineer - Mapping & Spatial Platform

Verkada; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Verkada is seeking a founding Staff Engineer to architect the Spatial Platform, rebuilding a high-performance 3D engine for geospatial visualization and collaborative editing. You will own the platform powering 8+ product lines, enabling interactive viewing, editing, and real-time collaboration with robust offline-first synchronization.

This greenfield role requires deep expertise in graphics, geospatial math, and scalable architecture to deliver a buttery-smooth 60 FPS experience across complex

Qualifications

• 5+ years building complex web apps or graphics engines.
• CS degree with solid fundamentals in data structures and math.
• Eye for detail with pixel-perfect execution and visual polish.
• Product grit: bridging CAD-level precision and consumer UX.
• Understanding of coordinate systems, geospatial projections, and 3D geometry.

Responsibilities

• Build the Rendering Platform: design high-performance rendering architecture for interactive geospatial visualization and precision editing.
• Set the UX Bar: define interaction model for spatial editing with pixel-level polish.
• Optimize for Latency: achieve sub-millisecond input latency in real-time vertex manipulation with partial GPU updates and custom shaders.
• Spatial Intelligence: develop real-time 3D line-of-sight, heatmaps, and AI-driven placement suggestions.
• Build the Sync Engine: own client-side CRDT architecture powering offline-first multi-user editing.

Job description

San Mateo, CA United States

Who We Are

Verkada is transforming how organizations protect their people and places with an integrated, privacy-sensitive AI-powered platform that includes solutions for video security, access control, air quality sensors, alarms, intercoms, and visitor management.

We’ve got serious momentum in the market: more than 30,000 customers (including 100+ of the Fortune 500), a $5.8B valuation , more than $1 billion in annualized bookings, and backing from CapitalG, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Felicis Ventures, Next47 and more. Physical AI is one of the most consequential technology shifts of our time, and Verkada is at the center of it.

You can look at all kinds of communities to see our platform’s impact in the world. It's the retailer that uses our agentic AI to deter theft before it happens. The warehouse that uses AI-powered alerts to make sure its team is protected on the floor with proper PPE. The school that’s alerted to a threat in real-time and triggers a lockdown in seconds, not minutes. We’re rapidly scaling this impact: today, more than 2 million Verkada devices are deployed across 170+ countries.

About the Role

We are looking for a founding Staff Engineer to lead the technical architecture of our next-generation Spatial Platform. For the past decade, floor plans have been static images; we are rebuilding that foundation from the ground up as a high-performance, interactive, and collaborative 3D engine.

This is a greenfield role for a builder who wants to own a core pillar of Verkada’s infrastructure before we hit the public markets. You won't just build features—you will architect a platform that supports 8+ product lines, solving the "hard math" of geospatial projections and the "hard graphics" of rendering thousands of interactive assets at a buttery-smooth 60 FPS.

What You'll Do

• Build the Rendering Platform: Design a high-performance rendering architecture that supports both an interactive viewer for high-density geospatial visualization and a precision editing surface for real-time vertex manipulation.
• Set the UX Bar: Partner with Design to define the interaction model for spatial editing — easing curves, snapping behavior, cursor states, loading transitions — and hold the line on pixel-level polish across the platform.
• Optimize for Latency: Solve the "500-element wall" with partial GPU buffer updates and custom shaders, ensuring sub-millisecond input latency during real-time vertex manipulation.
• Spatial Intelligence: Develop power-user tools like real-time 3D line-of-sight analysis, signal strength heatmaps, and AI-driven hardware placement suggestions.
• Build the Sync Engine: Own the client-side CRDT architecture (Yjs/Automerge-class) powering offline-first, multi-user editing — document model, local persistence, presence, and conflict resolution.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of experience building complex, customer-facing web applications or high-performance graphics engines.
• CS Fundamentals: A degree in Computer Science or a related field, with strong intuition for data structures, memory management, and linear algebra.
• Eye for Detail: Pixel-perfect execution — you notice the half-pixel misalignment, the 16ms jank, the easing curve that feels "off." You hold a high bar for visual polish and won't ship until interactions feel right.
• Product Grit: Ability to bridge the gap between CAD-level precision and consumer-grade UX, partnering closely with Design to turn rough specs into delightful, production-grade experiences.
• Mathematical Precision: Understanding of coordinate system conversions, geospatial projections, and 3D geometry.

Nice to Haves

• Graphics Stack: Experience with Deck.gl, MapLibre, Three.js, or raw WebGL/WebGPU.
• Collaborative Systems: Experience with real-time sync architectures (e.g., Yjs, Automerge, or Operational Transforms).
• Low-Level Web: Proficiency in high-performance 2D/3D graphics (Canvas API, low-level buffer management, or custom shaders).
• Geospatial Mastery: Familiarity with PostGIS, vector tiling (MVT), and GIS workflows.

US Employee Benefits

Verkada is committed to fostering a workplace environment that prioritizes the holistic health and wellbeing of our employees and their families by offering comprehensive wellness perks, benefits, and resources. Our benefits and perks programs include, but are not limited to: