Software Engineer jobs in California

NIO

Full-time · San Jose, CA · $192,100 – $249,600

This role develops the operating system and networking core for autonomous vehicle platforms at NIO, requiring deep expertise in embedded systems, kernel-level code, and hypervisor technologies. It suits experienced systems engineers who thrive on performance optimization and can mentor others in a collaborative environment.

Listed on NIO’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Motive

San Francisco, CA · $140,000 – $193,000

Motive seeks a backend engineer to design and operate high-scale data pipelines processing sensor telemetry from hundreds of thousands of IoT devices across their fleet management platform. This role combines cloud infrastructure work with stream processing and embedded systems collaboration, suited for engineers comfortable building distributed systems that connect hardware to cloud services.

Listed on Motive’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Together AI

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $160,000 – $280,000

Build the Kubernetes control plane and state machine that provisions and manages a GPU inference fleet, creating a declarative API so inference teams request resources without understanding the underlying complexity. You'll own the scheduling, defragmentation, and self-healing systems that keep GPU utilization high and the platform reliable in production.

Listed on Together AI’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Pylon

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $180,000 – $280,000

Pylon is hiring a full-stack software engineer to build features that help customer support and success teams use AI more effectively, with a focus on LLM observability, prompt execution, and search infrastructure. This role suits engineers with 3+ years of product experience who thrive in early-stage startup environments, move fast, and want hands-on ownership of projects from conception through delivery.

Listed on Pylon’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Thrive Market

Full-time · Playa Vista, CA · $175,000 – $190,000 · Remote

A Senior iOS Engineer role focused on modernizing Thrive Market's mobile app from a legacy codebase into a scalable, modular architecture. This suits experienced Swift developers who want to work on personalization features and technical infrastructure for a consumer e-commerce platform with social impact.

Listed on Thrive Market’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Zilliz

Redwood City, CA · $175,000 – $225,000

Zilliz is hiring a senior engineer to build cloud platform infrastructure for their vector database service, working across multi-cloud deployments and the database runtime to scale their AI application platform.

Listed on Zilliz’s careers site · Apply there ↗

InstaLily

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $150,000 – $190,000

This role builds the core AI agent platform at a fast-growing enterprise AI startup, working across backend services, frontend UIs, and LLM infrastructure. You'll own features end-to-end while staying embedded with customers, translating their workflows into shipped product and defending architectural decisions to executives.

Listed on InstaLily’s careers site · Apply there ↗

XPeng

Internship · Santa Clara, CA

This role involves optimizing AI inference performance on embedded automotive platforms, focusing on latency reduction and power efficiency for production vehicles. It suits someone with strong systems-level expertise in C++ and performance analysis who wants to work on autonomous driving at scale.

Listed on XPeng’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Suno

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $228,960 – $363,510

This role builds systems to detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and harmful content on Suno's AI music platform, protecting millions of creators. You'll develop data pipelines, investigation tools, and work across engineering, product, and legal teams to keep the platform safe and trustworthy.

Listed on Suno’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Voyager

Full-time · El Segundo, CA · $150,000 – $200,000

This role involves building and maintaining software systems that process and analyze large-scale geospatial datasets, particularly Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery, for defense and national security applications. It suits backend and systems engineers with Python expertise and Linux experience who want to work on infrastructure supporting geospatial data pipelines and visualization tools.

Listed on Voyager’s careers site · Apply there ↗

CharacterAI

Redwood City, CA · $200,000 – $300,000 · Remote

This role involves building machine learning systems and infrastructure to power discovery, recommendation, and search features for a rapidly growing AI consumer platform. You'll work cross-functionally to implement ML models, optimize data pipelines, and deploy production systems at scale.

Listed on CharacterAI’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Zencastr

San Francisco, CA · Remote

Zencastr is seeking a backend engineer to design and maintain scalable services for their podcasting platform, working across APIs, data pipelines, and distributed systems. This role suits someone with deep Node.js and TypeScript expertise who thrives in fast-moving startup environments and wants ownership of complex technical challenges.

Listed on Zencastr’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Baidu

Full-time · Mountain View, CA · $159,000 – $229,000

Lead a product engineering team building AI-powered advertising infrastructure while establishing security and compliance practices as the company's CISO. This role suits experienced backend engineers who want technical leadership responsibility across both R&D systems and information security.

Listed on Baidu’s careers site · Apply there ↗

LangChain

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $175,000 – $240,000

LangChain is hiring a senior engineer to build and scale LangSmith, their observability and evaluation platform for AI agents. This role suits someone with 5+ years of fullstack experience who can lead technical direction, mentor teammates, and work across Go, Python, and TypeScript to ship features that enterprise customers depend on.

Listed on LangChain’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Astranis

San Francisco, CA · $130,000 – $175,000

Astranis is seeking an embedded software engineer to develop flight software and firmware for satellites in high orbit, working on command, monitoring, and control systems that serve government and commercial customers. This role suits experienced C++ developers interested in space technology who can collaborate across teams and mentor junior engineers.

Listed on Astranis’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Sentry

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $215,000 – $400,000 · Remote

This role builds and scales the billing infrastructure that measures and prices usage across Sentry's platform, processing hundreds of billions of events daily with financial-grade accuracy. It suits engineers experienced with high-stakes distributed systems who enjoy solving intricate technical problems at the intersection of product, finance, and infrastructure.

Listed on Sentry’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Shield AI

Full-time · San Diego, CA · $260,000 – $390,000

Shield AI is seeking a deeply experienced GNC and state estimation specialist to lead the technical strategy and build a team for their Hivemind autonomy software, working across aircraft platforms and flight-control systems. This role blends senior technical leadership with hands-on algorithm development, spanning simulation, hardware testing, and flight validation for production autonomy systems.

Listed on Shield AI’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Crusoe

Full-time · San Francisco, CA · $215,000 – $260,000

Crusoe is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead kernel security initiatives for their AI infrastructure platform, hardening Linux systems against vulnerabilities and managing the security posture of their vertically integrated compute stack. This role combines deep kernel expertise with leadership responsibilities, guiding vulnerability remediation, secure development practices, and cross-team collaboration on high-performance AI systems.

Listed on Crusoe’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Bend Studio

Full-time · San Diego, CA · $138,700 – $208,100

This role develops and maintains build pipelines, platform integrations, and internal tools for a major AAA sports game across PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and mobile platforms. It suits experienced systems programmers comfortable with low-level debugging, cross-platform deployment, and long-term infrastructure modernization.

Listed on Bend Studio’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Anyscale

San Francisco, CA · $215,000 – $265,000

Anyscale is seeking a systems engineer to develop and maintain the Ray C++ backend, focusing on distributed scheduler performance, reliability, and architectural improvements. This role suits experienced backend engineers interested in open-source distributed systems and mentoring others on high-impact infrastructure challenges.

Listed on Anyscale’s careers site · Apply there ↗

Intuit

San Diego, CA · $188,500 – $274,000

A technical leadership role building data engineering platforms and pipelines at scale using cloud and big data technologies. This suits experienced data engineers who want to grow into staff-level responsibility while remaining hands-on, mentoring peers and shaping technology direction without people management.

Listed on Intuit’s careers site · Apply there ↗