Principal Software Engineer, Backend

Principal Backend Software Engineer

Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) is the world's largest telematics service provider. Its mission is to make the world's roads and drivers safer. The company's AI-driven platform, DriveWell Fusion®, gathers sensor data from millions of IoT devices — including smartphones, proprietary Tags, connected vehicles, dashcams, and third-party devices — and fuses them with contextual data to create a unified view of vehicle and driver behavior. Auto insurers, automakers, commercial mobility companies, and the public sector use insights from CMT's platform to power risk assessment, safety, claims, and driver improvement programs. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with offices in Budapest, Chennai, Seattle, Tokyo, and Zagreb, CMT measures and protects tens of millions of drivers across the world every day.

CMT is seeking a Principal Backend Software Engineer to produce scalable software solutions to reliably collect and manage data from sensors on smartphones and connected devices in vehicles. In this role, you will design architecture and backend infrastructure, and build features and applications that meet the needs of our customers. If you're interested in using your skills to make the world's roads and drivers safer, we'd like to meet you. The person in this role will own the architecture and evolution of the backend systems that power DriveWell Fusion. You will design and scale high-throughput data pipelines, REST APIs, and real-time event processing systems that handle millions of device connections daily. You will partner with ML and Data Science teams to build the compute and data infrastructure that supports model training, feature engineering, and large-scale inference — including GPU-accelerated workloads. You will drive infrastructure-as-code practices, CI/CD reliability, and system observability to ensure our platform remains performant and resilient as we grow. As a technical leader, you will mentor engineers, set technical direction, and collaborate with product and engineering stakeholders to deliver solutions that keep tens of millions of drivers safe.

Responsibilities

• Participate throughout the planning process, collaborating with product managers, data scientists, and fellow engineers to balance technical feasibility with customer needs
• Use independent judgment and discretion to implement and enhance solutions for telematics insights enabled by our processing pipelines
• Identify and measure key production performance metrics, ensuring scalability and efficiency
• Design, implement, and maintain automated tests for telematics solutions, ensuring safe delivery of features and fixes
• Ensure high bar for quality within our sphere of influence
• Provide expert guidance on cloud software architecture
• Keep the codebase healthy amidst increasing complexity
• Mentor junior engineers as needed
• Complete any additional tasks as they arise

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent years of experience and/or certification in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
• 7+ years of relevant professional experience
• Proven experience with development at scale
• Fluency in at least one programming language with ability to learn Python, Go, C++
• Experience with continuous deployment, and test-driven development (TDD)
• Experience with relational database (RDBMS) schema design
• Comfortable with AWS or similar services
• EC2, S3, Lambda, SNS, SQS, RDS (Postgres), Dynamo
• Terraform, Terragrunt
• Knowledgeable of containerization technologies (specifically Docker)
• Ability to work independently when needed and to learn quickly

Nice to Haves

• Experience with large-scale cloud compute for ML inference, including GPU-accelerated infrastructure (e.g., EC2 GPU instances, SageMaker, EKS with GPU scheduling), GPU vs CPU workload allocation, model serving at scale, and trade-offs between batch and real-time inference
• Experience building and operating data pipelines (ETL/ELT) at scale, and designing the data infrastructure that ML/Data Science teams rely on for feature engineering, model training, and production inference
• Hands-on experience designing and operating high-throughput backend systems handling millions of API requests and device connections daily, including real-time data ingestion and event-driven architectures (message queues, streaming platforms)
• Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker), container orchestration (AWS ECS or Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code using Terraform for managing cloud environments at scale
• Proficiency with observability and monitoring (Datadog, CloudWatch) including designing monitors, alerts, and SLOs
• Strong knowledge in web security, session management, and experience with network diagnostics and analytics tools
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) as part of daily engineering workflows

Compensation and Benefits

• Fair and competitive salary based on skills and experience, and annual performance bonus
• Equity may be awarded in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
• Medical, Dental, Vision and Life Insurance, matching 401k, short-term & long-term disability and parental leave
• Unlimited Paid Time Off including vacation, sick days & public holidays
• Flexible scheduling and work from home policy depending on role and responsibilities

Base Salary Range

• The base salary range for this position is: $167,200 to $209,000. This range is specifically for Cambridge, MA

Additional Perks

• Feel great working to improve road safety around the world!
• Join one of our many employee resource groups including Black, AAPI, LGBTQIA+, Women, Book Club and Health & Wellness
• Extensive wellness, education and employee assistance programs
• CMT will do all that is possible to support our employees and create a positive and inclusive work environment for all!

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At CMT, we believe the best ideas come from a mix of backgrounds and perspectives.

We are an equal-opportunity employer committed to creating a workplace and culture where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to bring their unique talents and perspectives. Diversity is essential to our success, and we actively seek candidates from all backgrounds to join our growing team.

We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability state. CMT is headquartered in Cambridge, MA.