Senior Software Engineer, Core Platforms at Bot Auto in Houston, TX

Job description

• We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Senior Software Engineer, Core Platforms to own the systems that carry Bot Auto's autonomous driving software from a developer's commit to a running truck. This is a deliberately broad, hands-on role spanning build and release engineering, cloud and on-prem infrastructure, core platform services, and the operation platforms that run our fleet — with security built into every layer. You will own the C++ build and packaging toolchain that every autonomy team depends on, the CI/CD and container image pipelines that release it, the Kubernetes platform and infrastructure-as-code beneath them, and the backend and edge services that connect our cloud to the vehicle. As a hands-on technical leader, you will be a primary reviewer and escalation point for the engineering organization, and will set the standards that keep a fast-moving codebase releasable, observable, and secure

Responsibilities

• Design and support company-wide event-driven architecture with messaging and streaming platforms, including stream and consumer provisioning and the shared IDL/schema services depend on.
• Develop and operate API gateways that provide secure, scalable, and reliable access to internal and external services.
• Design and build backend services for artifact and resource management, fleet data, and operations — including event-driven frameworks, object storage pipelines, durable state, and distributed locking.
• Develop the on-vehicle edge services that connect trucks to cloud platforms, covering event forwarding, credential and certificate management, and fleet-wide deployment.
• Build identity, authorization, and least-privilege access across services, devices, and the fleet — RBAC, JWT issuance and verification, service principals, and SSO integration.
• Own certificate and key management, including internal PKI, mTLS between cloud and vehicle, and the secrets lifecycle and rotation.
• Own and evolve the C++ build, dependency-resolution, and packaging toolchain (Conan/CMake-based) used across every autonomy repository, including dependency solving, version constraints, and cross-context consistency.
• Design and maintain container image pipelines for development, simulation, and on-vehicle runtime images — including GPU toolchain upgrades (CUDA/TensorRT), multi-stage runtime builds, and cross-compilation to aarch64 targets such as NVIDIA DriveOS.
• Serve as a primary code reviewer and design partner across the organization; write ADRs and design specifications for decisions that cross team boundaries.
• Participate in infrastructure on-call — mitigate user-impacting issues quickly with clear communication, then follow up with durable long-term fixes.
• Mentor engineers and raise the bar on testing, documentation, and operational excellence..

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience spanning build systems, infrastructure, or platform engineering
• Strong software development skills in Python and C++, plus at least one of Go, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript
• Demonstrated experience with C++ build and dependency tooling (CMake, Conan, or Bazel) and container build systems (Docker)
• Production experience with Kubernetes and at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Experience designing and operating backend services, APIs, databases, and event-driven systems
• Solid understanding of authentication, authorization, secrets management, and secure system design
• Outstanding communication skills and a track record of cross-team collaboration in a fast-moving environment
• Infrastructure-as-code proficiency (Pulumi, Terraform, OpenTofu, or Ansible) and GitOps delivery (Argo CD)
• Experience with workflow orchestration (Argo Workflows, Airflow) and streaming platforms (NATS JetStream, Kafka, Pulsar, RabbitMQ)
• Experience with API gateway platforms (APISIX, Kong) and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, OpenTelemetry)
• Cross-compilation and embedded/automotive toolchain experience (aarch64, NVIDIA DriveOS, TensorRT)
• Experience with PKI, mTLS, HSM/KMS-backed signing, IAM, and zero-trust architectures
• Prior experience deploying LLMs and building agentic or human-in-the-loop automation
• Background in autonomous vehicle systems, robotics, or other cyber-physical systems
• Full-stack development experience (React, TypeScript)

Skills

Required

• Container build systems (Docker)
• Kubernetes

Preferred

• GitOps delivery (Argo CD)
• API gateway platforms (APISIX, Kong)