Senior Software Engineer

About the role

Third Wave Automation is seeking a strong Software Engineer to lead the development of a critical component of our Fleet Services codebase. This role involves transitioning a product into a massive scale-up partnership with a leading forklift OEM, requiring expertise in serving-based compute, networking, and deployment solutions.

Responsibilities

• Drive the "Final Mile" of Productization: Transition core fleet service components from prototypes to high-availability, hardened production systems capable of 24/7 operations.
• Architect Distributed Integrations: Design and implement data pipelines connecting edge site infrastructure to cloud environments, ensuring robust real-time communication via low-latency protocols.
• Champion Infrastructure Observability (SRE Mindset): Propose, design, and implement robust logging, telemetry, and monitoring code for core infrastructure pieces to ensure full observability.
• Lead Advanced Diagnostics & Troubleshooting: Act as a premier technical investigator for complex edge failures, diagnosing root causes and proposing permanent fixes.
• Master the C++ Core: Own, optimize, and harden performance-critical C++ components within the Fleet Services and edge software stacks, tackling complex concurrency, low-latency messaging, and resource constraints.
• Scale with an AI-First Mindset: Use and champion generative AI tools to streamline boilerplate development, optimize API testing, and accelerate overall feature velocity.
• Technical Guidance & Mentorship: Provide high-signal code reviews and technical mentorship to intermediate and junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and rigorous engineering standards.

Requirements

Experience: 7–10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of shipping scalable backend components or distributed systems.

Production-Grade C++ Expertise: Deep, hands-on mastery of modern C++ (C++14/17/20) in a Linux environment, with a stellar grasp of systems programming, memory management, and debugging multi-threaded applications.

SRE & Systems Troubleshooting Acumen: Strong experience or a background in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) concepts, highly skilled at diagnosing distributed systems failures and building customized system monitoring/alerting infrastructure.

Data & Messaging Mastery: Strong hands-on experience handling real-time data flows, message brokers (e.g., MQTT, gRPC, WebSockets), and relational/non-relational database management.

Infrastructure & Tooling: High comfort level with Linux internals, shell scripting, Python, and containerized edge clusters (Docker, Kubernetes/K3s).

AI Tooling Competency: Fluent with AI-assisted workflows to accelerate solution prototyping, test automation, and systems documentation.

Communication: Exceptional collaborative communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to clarify technical trade-offs across product management and cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Prior experience in robotics, IoT deployments, autonomous vehicles, or safety-critical industrial environments.
• Experience deploying and managing bare-metal software stacks at the network edge.
• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline.

Skills

Experience with C++, SRE, distributed systems, real-time data flows, message brokers, and AI-assisted workflows.

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits including health, dental, vision, and a 401k matching program.

A flexible working schedule and opportunities to show and tell about your work.

Lunch and dinner provided daily, with a variety of snacks available.

Great teammates and a supportive company culture.

Pay

The pay range for this position is $195,000 - $250,000/yr+ benefits+equity.

Schedule

This role is based in Union City at least three days a week and offers no relocation assistance.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.