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San Francisco, United States

Staff Software Engineer - Backend

Motive · San Francisco · United States

$200,000–$235,000 per yearSoftware Engineer

Posted: 8/18/2026 · Last checked: 10/12/2026

Job description

Quoted in full from Motive's job posting. Gavroche does not edit it.

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. 

Regarding US-based roles, depending on your role and primary work location, Motive Technologies, Inc. (“Employer”) discloses candidates may be required to execute a non-compete covenant with the Employer. This requirement does not apply to lawyers, interns, or employees working in CA, MN, MT, ND, OK, or where otherwise prohibited by law.

Non-compete covenant terms in all other jurisdictions will be subject to the applicable statutory requirements, including but not limited to, procedures, industry related prohibitions, or salary and compensation thresholds.

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.

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