Skip is on a mission to make life joyful through powered movement.
Movement is a powerful way to build physical, mental and social health. Yet it is elusive for 2 billion people due to age, injury, or disability. We are building products that will restore mobility for millions and enable a new frontier of joyful movement experiences. We want to build a future where a grandparent can easily outrun their grandkids and no one is left behind at the trailhead.
Skip is a 24-person early-stage start-up that spun out of Google X in 2023. With deep cross-disciplinary expertise and key partnerships (e.g. with Arc’teryx) we are uniquely positioned to launch the first commercially successful wearable robotic device, the MO/GO, develop a platform to launch future Movewear products and transform millions of lives in the coming years.
THE ROLE:
We are seeking a highly motivated and adaptable backend engineer to own the systems powering a new generation of wearable robots. from APIs and data pipelines connecting devices to the cloud, to the infrastructure behind real-time telemetry, over-the-air updates, and fleet management. You'll navigate the full range of backend challenges (scalability, reliability, security, latency) while integrating tightly with embedded hardware in a fast-moving startup environment.
You’ll work as an equal member of our 3-4 person software team. You'll be responsible for backend development and cloud infrastructure as we build a new consumer robotics platform. We are currently a flat team, but you’ll be expected to coach and mentor Skippers with less experience.
Some of the specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Develop and manage our backend systems, particularly focusing on containerized services and cloud storage solutions for data ingestion and processing as we go from prototypes -> fleet of 5,000 MO/GOs shipped to customers homes in the next 2 years
- Automate infrastructure setup and management using tools like Terraform, making the deployment process more reproducible and scalable.
- Enable us to scale safely and sustainable, for example transitioning from a single cloud project to distinct Dev and Prod projects in GCP, ensuring system safety, data integrity, and environment separation.
- Design and optimize data storage and retrieval processes, scaling up storage buckets and data ingestion pipelines to meet increasing data demands.
- Manage and streamline CI/CD workflows currently hosted in GitHub, reducing costs by optimizing test run segmentation and potentially hosting CI on GCP VMs.
- Monitor and optimize infrastructure, ensuring efficient usage of compute and storage resources
- Develop automation scripts and processes for infrastructure provisioning, backups, monitoring, and maintenance, enhancing system stability and scalability.
- Implement security best practices across backend and infrastructure to ensure data protection and system reliability.
- Collaborate with frontend, hardware, and controls teams to ensure smooth data flow across the system.
- Wear prototypes several hours a week to participate in data collection, test new models and provide feedback
- Contribute to the improvement of software development processes and practices. Engage in code reviews and knowledge sharing to promote a culture of continuous learning.
- Bring joy to the team, participate in embarrassing team events, tolerate KZ’s terrible music choices
Basic Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience in backend engineering, with a focus on cloud infrastructure and data-intensive applications
- Excellent coding skills in Python and C++
- Experience with cloud infrastructure like GCP
- Strong experience with containerization technologies like Docker and orchestration tools such as Kubernetes.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools, e.g. Terraform
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, e.g. GitHub Actions
- Experience with IoT and edge devices
- Able to deliver quality work in a fast-paced startup environment
- Ability to relocate to work at the Skip Bay Area office
- Sense of humour, tolerant of Aussie & Canadian spelling
Bonus Points
- Experience in scaling and managing data pipelines for high-volume data ingestion using Beam/dataflow
- Understanding of DevOps and SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) principles to ensure stability and scalability in production systems.
- Experience with a UI framework like Dart/Flutter or Angular/TS
- Experience with Rust, robotics or mechatronics (ST/TI firmware, SPI/UART, BLE, etc)
- Experience with machine learning / ML Ops
- Experience in start-up environments
- Personal motivation to improve human movement
This is a full time hybrid position working at the Skip office in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco.