The Engineering Challenge

Building software for machines introduces challenges that traditional software systems rarely face. Devices operate in real-world environments, networks are unreliable, and software must interact with hardware, sensors, and real-time data. At Viam, engineers build the platform and tools that make those machines programmable, observable, and manageable at scale.

About the Role

New York City (Hybrid 3+ days per week in office)

We are looking for a Lead Engineer to own the technical direction and delivery of our Data/ML function. This is a hands-on leadership role where you will manage a team, make architectural decisions, and code.

The Data/ML team owns the infrastructure that moves data from devices to the cloud and makes it usable across the Viam platform. Performance, reliability, usability, and correctness affect every solution built on Viam. On top of that foundation, the team also owns the ML infrastructure that turns that data into models: training workflows, labeling pipelines, and inference in both cloud and at the edge. Some of the interesting challenges they solve: handling an unusually wide variety of data types from devices that are frequently offline, building auto-labeling and training workflows at scale, and expanding cloud inference across multiple model backends.

Tech stack is Go and Python with a Svelte frontend, running ML workloads on GKE using TensorFlow, TFLite, and ONNX, with MongoDB Atlas, GCP, and Azure for the data layer. You will report to the VP of Engineering.

What You'll Own

Engineers at Viam own problems from product design through production and play an active role in shaping how the platform evolves.

• Lead and develop a team of 5+ engineers: set direction, run planning, ship reliably, and grow the team through coaching, feedback, and performance conversations
• Write code and ship features alongside your team across the full stack, from backend infrastructure through UI
• Own the architecture of the data pipeline end to end, from device to cloud, including storage, querying, and the APIs that power the rest of the platform
• Drive the reliability and performance of ML training and inference infrastructure, from custom training workflows to the services that power auto-labeling and model evaluation
• Have opinions on what gets built and how users experience it, and bring those into product decisions early
• Own cross-team problems through to resolution, working closely with Computer Vision, Fleet Management, Mobile, and Solutions Engineering

What You Bring

We are looking for a technical lead with strong systems judgment and product instincts who can set direction and stay hands-on.

• You have led engineers and know how to develop them, not just manage them
• You have a background building and scaling backend or platform infrastructure in production
• You have shipped APIs and UIs and think about both as part of the same product problem
• You have sound judgment on system design and tradeoffs under real constraints
• You have product instincts and use them: when something is being built the wrong way, you say so early
• You make decisions with incomplete information and have a bias toward shipping over planning
• You have a track record of driving cross-team projects from ambiguity to production
• Experience with data-intensive systems, streaming pipelines, or ML infrastructure

Experience with robotics or IoT is not required.

How We Work

Our culture emphasizes ownership, curiosity, and decisive execution.

• This space has brand new challenges and we all have an appetite to learn
• Good work in production beats perfect work in review
• We know that the best teams help each other succeed through feedback

The salary for this role is between $220,000 - 250,000 /year. 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.