Principal Software Development Engineer, Navigation SDK

Mapbox is the leading real-time location platform for a new generation of location-aware businesses. Mapbox is the only platform that equips organizations with the full set of tools to power the navigation of people, packages, and vehicles everywhere. More than 4 million registered developers have chosen Mapbox because of the platform’s flexibility, security and privacy compliance. Organizations use Mapbox applications, data, SDKs and APIs to create customized and immersive experiences that delight their customers. 

What We Do

The Navigation team at Mapbox develops and operates web services powering virtually all of Mapbox’s strategic navigation initiatives in consumer, automotive, and logistics verticals. This is a highly multidisciplinary globally distributed organization, with work spanning distributed systems on AWS to geospatial localization, traffic telemetry, and mapping. Delivering navigation solutions means delivering a model of the world that’s changing all the time and needs to automatically support the world’s edge cases – writing systems, fonts, local regulations, and global boundary disputes.

The teams at Mapbox are revolutionizing in-car experiences with technology to build fast, industry-leading maps and navigation for any vehicle. We’ve launched products such as MapGPT, Mapbox for EV, and we’re enhancing the visual experience of in-vehicle navigation with 3D styling with our new Mapbox Standard through web and mobile SDKs. Mapbox has worked with automotive partners—including BMW, Toyota, and GM—to bring the best aspects of mobile app development into in-vehicle navigation and infotainment.

• Mapbox Blog: Introducing 3D Live Navigation

• Mapbox Product: ADAS SDK

• Mapbox Newsroom: AI Features in New Navigation SDK

What You'll Do

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will lead the technical excellence, innovation, and execution for the Navigation organization, specifically shaping the future of the Navigation product portfolio: Logistics API, Directions API, EV Routing, Routing across many modalities, Guidance, Traffic, Incidents/Closures, and Telemetry. In this strategic role, you will define the technical vision and architecture for Navigation products, aligning their individual initiatives with the broader Navigation and Mapbox organizational goals working hands-on with cross-functional Product partners, Directors, SVP of Location Services, CTO, and globally distributed Mapbox Engineers and Engineering Managers. You will drive the development of secure, frictionless developer and driver/rider experiences while designing and building large-scale systems from the ground up. This highly collaborative, fast-paced environment offers the opportunity to influence how teams leverage data to innovate and support business growth. We are seeking a seasoned leader with deep expertise in highly scaled, real-time, distributed systems, a passion for customer experience and experimentation, and the ability to mentor and inspire across the organization.

In this role, you will:

• Develop the Roadmap: Set and guide the long-term technical direction and roadmap for the Navigation organization, aligning with Mapbox’s business objectives while driving innovation.

• Shape the Vision: Lead and mentor a global team of 100+ engineers through the design, development, and execution of critical engineering components to shape the vision for exceptional customer experience.

• Promote Collaboration: Collaborate across teams to uncover and align complex technical requirements, evaluate design trade-offs, and influence product direction.

• Proactively Innovate: Evaluate, prototype, and roll out new technologies/frameworks to cultivate a culture of innovation that supports and scales for the company’s expansion into new markets.

• Advocate for Customers: Engage directly with customers to understand their needs, travel as needed to meet with them, discuss ideas and solutions, and effectively relay insights back to the team.

What We Believe Are Important Traits for This Role

• 15+ years of engineering experience: Extensive hands-on experience showcasing expertise and a strong track record in the field.

• Strong distributed systems and infrastructure understanding: Ability to design, build, and lead engineers in the building of distributed systems, low-latency pipelines, and large-scale data processing, to name a few.

• SDK development: Deep experience designing, building, and maintaining software development kits across platforms(e.g., iOS, Android, Web, or embedded systems), with a focus on developer experience, usability, and performance.

• Technical domain knowledge: Extensive experience coding in many languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript, Typescript, Go. Deep knowledge of different design patterns, memory management, multithreading, and performance optimization for high-efficiency applications.

• Mobile development: Experience building mobile applications (iOS and/or Android) with a focus on SDK integration and development, using languages such as Swift, Objective-C, Kotlin, or Java

• Cloud proficiency: Extensive experience with cloud database services, including AWS RDS, Google Cloud Spanner, and Azure SQL, as well as deploying and managing databases in cloud environments.

• Operational excellence: You drive a culture of quality and continuous improvement in your organization. Strong passion for clean code and robust architecture, with a drive to elevate engineering practices and design standards across the team.

• Ownership & execution: Own the technical vision, lead the strategy and guide the team to execute towards building the future of Navigation. Experience leading with empathy globally distributed engineering teams.

• Customer focus: You care deeply about your customers and their problems, and you work tirelessly to innovate on their behalf.

• Growth mindset: Have the humility to accept mistakes, learn and grow from them.

• Partnership: Experience collaborating across teams and domains including product, executives, design & key stakeholders to help drive key search decisions that influence the business.

• Strong written and vocal communication skills: You can talk and write about complex ideas concisely to a wide audience. You are able to lead and resolve company-wide technical discussions and are able to collaborate and include input from cross-functional teams (security, devops, data, compliance and product).

• Data informed mindset: You believe in the value of data informed decision making and strive to measure things that are not straight forward but essential. You also have the right instincts to make speedy decisions in the absence of perfect & comprehensive data.

• Experience bringing products to market: You have a proven track record of shipping successful products. You have experience coordinating deadlines, setting pricing, developing a marketing strategy, and enabling support teams.

• High standards for work: You drive a culture of quality on the teams you work with and know how to drive healthy tension between quality and velocity.

Valuable But Not Required Experience

• Prior experience in Maps and/or Navigation. While domain expertise is valuable, at our core, we are individuals who are technical, customer-focused, genuinely curious, adaptive, and eager to transform customer experiences from what they are today.

• Advanced degree (Masters and/or PhD) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field.

What We Value

In addition to our core values, which are not unique to this position and are necessary for Mapbox leaders:

• We value high-performing creative individuals who dig into problems and opportunities.

• We believe in individuals being their whole selves at work. We commit to this through supportive health care, parental leave, flexibility for the things that come up in life, and innovating on how we think about supporting our people.

• We emphasize an environment of teaching and learning to equip employees with the tools needed to be successful in their function and the company.

• We strongly believe in the value of growing a diverse team and encourage people of all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations to apply.

Our annual base compensation for this role ranges from $269,450 - $364,550 for most US locations and 5% to 10% higher for US locations with a higher cost of labor. Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), market demands, and specific work location. Please discuss your specific work location with your recruiter for more information.

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We are committed to a fair and equitable hiring process. We do not discriminate against any protected class.

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