Staff Software Engineer, Platform

Gomotive; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 235,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401k plan

Paid time off

Job summary

Motive is seeking a Software Engineer to design and build scalable services and APIs powering mission-critical customer experiences, with ownership from architecture through production.

You will mentor engineers, partner with product and engineering teams, and help deliver reliable, secure systems at scale. The role requires 5+ years of experience and proficiency in modern languages such as Go, Ruby, Python, Java, Kotlin, or Swift.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building production systems or platforms.
• Experience with Go, Ruby, Python, Java, Kotlin or Swift.
• Proven design of scalable distributed systems and cloud-native services.
• Strong problem-solving and risk/bottleneck identification skills.
• Experience mentoring engineers and collaborating with cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship scalable services, APIs, and product features with reliability and performance.
• Drive technical design and architecture decisions for new capabilities and improvements.
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to refine requirements and deliver high-quality solutions.
• Improve engineering excellence through code reviews, testing, monitoring, and debugging.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to team direction by sharing knowledge and best practices.

Skills

Go

Ruby

Python

Java

Kotlin

Swift

Distributed systems

Cloud-native services

Mentoring engineers

Job description

Who we are: Motive empowers the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable. For the first time ever, safety, operations and finance teams can manage their drivers, vehicles, equipment, and fleet related spend in a single system. Combined with industry leading AI, the Motive platform gives you complete visibility and control, and significantly reduces manual workloads by automating and simplifying tasks.

Motive serves nearly 100,000 customers – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses – across a wide range of industries, including transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, and the public sector.

Visit gomotive.com to learn more.

About the Role:

As a Software Engineer at Motive, you will design and build scalable product and platform capabilities that power mission-critical customer experiences, with meaningful ownership from architecture through production operations. In this role, you will report into an Engineering Manager, and help shape technical direction, raise engineering standards, and mentor other engineers while partnering across product and engineering teams to deliver reliable, secure, and maintainable systems.

What You’ll Do:

• Design, build, and ship scalable services, APIs, and product features with a strong emphasis on reliability, maintainability, and performance.
• Drive technical design and make sound architecture decisions for new capabilities and improvements to existing systems.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to refine requirements and deliver high-quality solutions that solve meaningful customer problems.
• Improve engineering excellence through code reviews, testing, monitoring, logging, debugging, and operational best practices.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to team direction by sharing knowledge, providing technical guidance, and helping scale effective engineering practices.

What We’re Looking For:

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building production systems, platforms, or customer-facing products.
• Strong experience with one or more modern programming languages such as Go, Ruby, Python, Java, Kotlin, Swift, or similar.
• Proven experience designing scalable distributed systems, data models, APIs, and cloud-native services.
• Strong technical judgment and problem-solving skills, including the ability to identify risks, bugs, and bottlenecks early.
• Experience mentoring engineers and collaborating effectively with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver complex technical initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building production systems, platforms, or customer-facing products.
• Experience mentoring engineers and collaborating effectively with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver complex technical initiatives.
• Experience leading technical projects, designing distributed systems.

Pay Transparency

Your compensation may be based on several factors, including education, work experience, and certifications. For certain roles, total compensation may include restricted stock units. Motive offers benefits including health, pharmacy, optical and dental care benefits, paid time off, sick time off, short term and long term disability coverage, life insurance as well as 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). Learn more about our benefits by visiting Motive Perks & Benefits.

The base compensation range for this role is: $200,000 — $235,000 USD

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is one of Motive's core values. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives.

Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here.

UK Candidate Privacy Notice here.

The applicant must be authorized to receive and access those commodities and technologies controlled under U.S. Export Administration Regulations. It is Motive's policy to require that employees be authorized to receive access to Motive products and technology.

All job postings are for existing vacancies. Please note; some interviews or new-hire training sessions may be held in person at one of our global offices.