Six Figure Work

Staff Software Engineer, Backend

Motive

Company websitegomotive.com (Motive, opens in new tab)

Base salary $200K  to $235K

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in United States

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  • LocationUnited States
  • WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (3 h ago) · observed since

About this job

Who we are:

Motive empowers the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable. For the first time ever, safety, operations and finance teams can manage their drivers, vehicles, equipment, and fleet related spend in a single system. Combined with industry leading AI, the Motive platform gives you complete visibility and control, and significantly reduces manual workloads by automating and simplifying tasks.

Motive serves nearly 100,000 customers – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses – across a wide range of industries, including transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, and the public sector.

Visit gomotive.com to learn more.

About the Role: 

 As a Software Engineer at Motive, you will design and build scalable product and platform capabilities that power mission-critical customer experiences, with meaningful ownership from architecture through production operations.  In this role, you will report into an Engineering Manager, and help shape technical direction, raise engineering standards, and mentor other engineers while partnering across product and engineering teams to deliver reliable, secure, and maintainable systems.

What You’ll Do: 

  • Design, build, and ship scalable services, APIs, and product features with a strong emphasis on reliability, maintainability, and performance.  
  • Drive technical design and make sound architecture decisions for new capabilities and improvements to existing systems.  
  • Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to refine requirements and deliver high-quality solutions that solve meaningful customer problems. 
  • Improve engineering excellence through code reviews, testing, monitoring, logging, debugging, and operational best practices. 
  • Mentor engineers and contribute to team direction by sharing knowledge, providing technical guidance, and helping scale effective engineering practices. 

What We’re Looking For: 

  • 5+ years of software engineering experience building production systems, platforms, or customer-facing products.
  • Strong experience with one or more modern programming languages such as Go, Ruby, Python, Java, Kotlin, Swift, or similar.  
  • Proven experience designing scalable distributed systems, data models, APIs, and cloud-native services.  
  • Strong technical judgment and problem-solving skills, including the ability to identify risks, bugs, and bottlenecks early.
  • Experience mentoring engineers and collaborating effectively with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver complex technical initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications

  • 8+ years of software engineering experience building production systems, platforms, or customer-facing products.
  • Experience mentoring engineers and collaborating effectively with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver complex technical initiatives.
  • Experience leading technical projects, designing distributed systems.

Pay Transparency
Your compensation may be based on several factors, including education, work experience, and certifications. For certain roles, total compensation may include restricted stock units. Motive offers benefits including health, pharmacy, optical and dental care benefits, paid time off, sick time off, short term and long term disability coverage, life insurance as well as 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). Learn more about our benefits by visiting
Motive Perks & Benefits

The base compensation range for this role is:

$200,000—$235,000 USD

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is one of Motive's core values. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives. 

Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here.

UK Candidate Privacy Notice here.

The applicant must be authorized to receive and access those commodities and technologies controlled under U.S. Export Administration Regulations. It is Motive's policy to require that employees be authorized to receive access to Motive products and technology. 

Regarding US-based roles, depending on your role and primary work location, Motive Technologies, Inc. (“Employer”) discloses candidates may be required to execute a non-compete covenant with the Employer. This requirement does not apply to lawyers, interns, or employees working in CA, MN, MT, ND, OK, or where otherwise prohibited by law.

Non-compete covenant terms in all other jurisdictions will be subject to the applicable statutory requirements, including but not limited to, procedures, industry related prohibitions, or salary and compensation thresholds.

All job postings are for existing vacancies. Please note; some interviews or new-hire training sessions may be held in person at one of our global offices.

Source: Motive on Greenhouse · View original posting (opens in new tab)

Pay in context

This role's base floor ($200,000) is above 71% of the 4,280 Software Engineering roles in California listed on this site; 147 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $176,362; the middle half runs from $149,100 to $204,000.

Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 6, 2026.

This range next to 6 other live Motive roles with the nearest advertised base floor
Chart as a table
This range next to 6 other live Motive roles with the nearest advertised base floor
RolePublished base
Staff Software Engineer, Backend (this listing)$200K - $235K
Manager, Technical Program Management$200K - $270K
Staff Software Engineer - Backend$189K - $225K
Director, Product Strategy & Monetization$185K - $255K
Director, Product Management$220K - $280K
Director, Product Design$225K - $295K
Security Engineer, Device/Hardware$160K - $205K

Same $100K to $400K scale as every card. All Motive roles · How to read the bar

Observed changes

  1. First observed on the employer's board
  2. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2026-08-18
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: Hybrid - San Francisco, California

USD 200,000 – 235,000 · interval unstated · pay_input_range · The base compensation range for this role is: · base-labelled (R1: base compensation)

Method
Structured pay field published by the employer
Checked
Rule set
us-base-v2

The employer's job board publishes this pay as a dedicated data field. We read the field directly; no interpretation was needed.

What we verified

  • The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
  • The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
  • The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.

We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.