Sr. Staff Backend Engineer AI-Native, Devices Cloud

Role Description

As a Sr. Staff Cloud Engineer on the Devices Cloud team, you will own the technical direction of the cloud systems that power Life360's connected hardware — Tile trackers, Jiobit wearables, and emerging device categories. This is a systems-level leadership role: you are the recognized technical authority for our device cloud infrastructure, spanning real-time state management, high-frequency telemetry ingest, and the integration layer that connects physical hardware to family-facing experiences.

At this level, your work extends well beyond implementation. You set technical direction, define architectural standards, mentor Staff and Senior engineers, and partner with engineering and product leadership to align the technical roadmap with company goals. You operate across teams and functional groups — influencing firmware, mobile, platform, and data teams — and your decisions shape systems serving tens of millions of families daily.

You are also a leader in AI-native engineering. You don't just use AI — you define how it should be used. You architect agent-driven workflows, codify practices that multiply team output, and partner with engineering leadership to spread these patterns across the broader organization.

What You'll Do

• Own the technical architecture and long-term roadmap for Devices Cloud systems — device connectivity, telemetry ingest, state management, command/control, and data pipelines — ensuring they are scalable, secure, and resilient at Life360's scale.
• Define and drive system-level technical direction across multiple teams, identifying architectural trade-offs, resolving cross-team design conflicts, and aligning engineering efforts with company strategy.
• Lead AI-native engineering practices for Devices Cloud: architect agentic workflows, codify patterns for AI-assisted spec writing, code generation, test coverage, and incident response — and partner with org leadership to extend these playbooks broadly.
• Partner with firmware, mobile, product, and platform teams to define APIs, integration standards, and device-driven workflows that translate cleanly across the hardware-software boundary.
• Drive the architecture and delivery of large-scale, cross-team initiatives — from conception through production — managing dependencies, unblocking teams, and maintaining accountability for outcomes.
• Anticipate system bottlenecks, failure modes, and security risks before they materialize; define safeguards and engineering standards that prevent class-of-problem recurrences.
• Mentor and grow Staff and Senior engineers across the team: provide architectural guidance, conduct high-quality technical reviews, and act as a force multiplier for team output.
• Collaborate with engineering and product leadership to influence organizational priorities, advocate for technical investments, and communicate technical strategy to executive stakeholders.
• Represent the team in cross-functional forums; produce clear, concise architectural documentation and roadmap artifacts accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Participate in on-call rotation and lead high-severity incident response, including post-mortems and systemic remediation.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale backend or cloud infrastructure systems — with a strong preference for IoT, telematics, or hardware-adjacent domains.
• Demonstrated track record of setting technical direction across teams, driving architectural decisions, and aligning engineering roadmaps with business goals.
• Deep expertise with cloud-native infrastructure (AWS: EKS, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, Kinesis, etc.), distributed systems design, and high-throughput data pipelines.
• Strong hands-on experience with agentic AI workflows — not just prompt engineering, but architecting multi-agent systems, managing context, and building AI-native development practices at a team or org level.
• Proven ability to mentor Staff and Senior engineers, elevate team-wide engineering standards, and drive cultural change through influence rather than authority.
• Exceptional communication skills: able to distill complex architectural concepts for diverse audiences, from junior engineers to executive leadership.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, manage competing priorities across groups, and lead through influence in a cross-functional environment.
• Experience with high-frequency ingest systems, time-series data, and streaming platforms (Kafka, Kinesis, or similar).
• Bachelor’s Degree in a Technical field, or equivalent experience.

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with IoT, telematics, embedded, or firmware-adjacent systems.
• Background in SRE practices, reliability engineering, and progressive delivery.
• Familiarity with observability platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, DataDog).
• Experience contributing to industry conversations: open-source projects, conference talks, or technical publications.
• Knowledge of hardware/firmware communication protocols (MQTT, BLE, CoAP, etc.).

AI-Native Expectations

We use AI coding tools as a professional standard on this team. Here's what that means in practice:

• Daily use: You use AI coding assistants (we support Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot) for real, substantive tasks: analysis, coding, refactoring, testing, navigating codebases, and documentation. Not just research or autocomplete.
• Judgment and ownership: AI-generated code gets the same review you'd give any PR. You are accountable for everything you ship.
• Velocity: We expect senior engineers who use AI well to operate with meaningful leverage — doing more with the same time, taking on problems that would otherwise require a larger team.
• Team leadership: You share what works. You automate prompting strategies that others can build on and help teammates earlier in their AI workflow adoption get up to speed.
• Continuous learning: The tooling is changing fast. You stay current and bring recommendations to the team when something would meaningfully improve how we work.

Benefits

• Competitive pay and benefits
• Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance plans (US and Canada)
• 401(k) plan with company matching (US) / RRSP with DPSP matching (Canada)
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental well-being
• Flexible PTO, plus several company-wide days off throughout the year
• Winter and Summer week-long synchronized company shutdowns
• Learning & Development programs
• Equipment, tools, and reimbursement support for a productive remote environment
• Free Life360 Platinum Membership for your preferred circle
• Free Tile Products