Engineering Manager, Device Platforms

Niantic Spatial•San Francisco, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Niantic Spatial is seeking a hands-on engineering leader to lead its Device SDK and Mobile Engineering teams. The role oversees native SDKs, spatial computing runtimes, and flagship mobile applications, combining people management, technical leadership, architecture, and regular production coding. The manager will bring experience with current AI technologies and guide the integration of AI into the software development lifecycle, including agentic development practices. Reporting to the Head of Product and Platform Engineering, this leader will shape the technical direction, execution strategy, and platform investments for Niantic Spatial’s device-native ecosystem across mobile, XR, robotics, and emerging edge-computing environments. The Device SDK team builds the native technology stack, including runtimes, SDKs, computer vision and spatial computing integrations, sensor fusion, device-side processing, platform abstractions, hardware optimization, and build and test infrastructure. The Mobile Applications team develops flagship iOS and Android products and sample applications, validates platform capabilities, and provides best-practice SDK implementations. The role is based at Niantic Spatial’s San Francisco headquarters and requires four days per week in the office, with occasional travel to customer sites, partner organizations, and engineering off-sites. The position requires U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Requirements

10 or more years of software engineering experience, including significant experience building and shipping native applications or SDKs.
5 or more years of engineering leadership experience managing teams and technical leads.
Expert-level proficiency in native iOS development with Swift and Android development with Kotlin.
Strong understanding of software architecture, performance optimization, and cross-platform development.
Experience leading engineers through complex technical initiatives while remaining hands-on.
Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.
Ability to build and maintain customer relationships and travel occasionally to client locations.

Nice To Haves

Experience with in-app telemetry capture, analytics, and business intelligence data streams that support informed cross-functional decision-making.
Experience supporting government or defense customers, including familiarity with FedRAMP, GovCloud, secure deployment environments, compliance documentation, and regulated-customer operational expectations.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the technical vision for Niantic Spatial’s device-native ecosystem.
Define AI-native development workflows and guide adoption of best practices for agentic development.
Establish architecture, engineering standards, and development practices across the Device SDK and Mobile Engineering teams.
Guide platform investments that improve developer experience, portability, performance, and scalability.
Partner with Research, Platform, and Product leadership to turn emerging capabilities into production-ready products and SDKs.
Participate in architecture reviews, technical design discussions, and critical implementation efforts.
Align architecture patterns with Platform to create a cohesive product ecosystem across surface areas.
Balance long-term platform investments with near-term product commitments and ensure predictable delivery, quality, and operational excellence.
Contribute production code regularly; review code, mentor engineers, and participate in technical problem solving.
Support implementation of complex features across mobile applications, SDKs, native runtimes, and platform integrations.
Help teams debug, analyze performance, and optimize systems while remaining engaged in day-to-day development.
Directly manage leads and engineers in the Device SDK and Mobile Engineering teams.
Recruit, mentor, and retain high-performing engineers; support career growth, performance management, and technical development.
Foster engineering excellence, ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Build and maintain customer relationships and travel occasionally to client locations.