Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Equipment Edge)

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies • Palo Alto, CA

11d • $186,000 - $255,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

This role requires expertise in architecting and developing robust manufacturing applications that bridge the gap between shop-floor equipment and enterprise systems. The Staff Software Engineer will play a pivotal role in engineering scalable applications, ensuring seamless data flow, real-time control, and intelligent production insights across the manufacturing ecosystem. This is a hybrid role out of our Palo Alto, Irvine, CA or Normal, IL locations, and the person will report to the Sr. Manager, Equipment and Execution Platform.

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional software development experience with a strong focus on backend development.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Familiarity with industrial communication protocols (e.g. CIP, Modbus, MQTT) OPC UA and experience integrating with factory equipment (e.g. Programmable Logic Controllers, Robot controllers)
• Experience designing and developing firmware or software for resource-constrained embedded systems, including familiarity with hardware interfaces, real-time operating systems (RTOS), and debugging at the hardware level.
• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs, gRPC, including API documentation and versioning.
• Extensive experience with Golang, including concurrency, networking, and data structures.
• Strong understanding of data processing techniques and experience with message queues and stream processing (e.g.NATS, Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Knowledge of security best practices for backend systems and industrial environments.
• Proficiency in working with SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and monitoring tools.
• Experience with edge computing platforms and technologies, including containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and guidance to a team of engineers, driving architectural decisions and ensuring the quality of the team's output.
• Design and architect complex backend systems for equipment integration, considering scalability, performance, security, and maintainability.
• Mentor and coach other engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• Tackle complex technical challenges and provide innovative solutions to optimize manufacturing processes.
• Champion code quality standards and best practices, conducting code reviews and ensuring the team's code is well-documented and testable.
• Identify and address performance bottlenecks in backend systems, optimizing for speed and efficiency.
• Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders, clearly articulating technical concepts and decisions.
• Take ownership of projects and initiatives, driving them to successful completion.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary
• Eligible to participate in our annual company performance bonus program
• Eligible for equity in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
• Comprehensive benefits package designed to support the health, wellbeing, and financial future for full-time employees
• Health coverage
• Retirement savings
• Time off
• Family planning programs

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior