Software Development Engineer II, Maps API

Mapbox is the leading real-time location platform for a new generation of location-aware businesses. Mapbox is the only platform that equips organizations with the full set of tools to power the navigation of people, packages, and vehicles everywhere. More than 4 million registered developers have chosen Mapbox because of the platform’s flexibility, security and privacy compliance. Organizations use Mapbox applications, data, SDKs and APIs to create customized and immersive experiences that delight their customers. 

What We Do

The Maps API team builds and maintains the applications and infrastructure responsible for creating and distributing Mapbox maps. Thousands of customers rely on our services to seamlessly handle billions of requests every day, scale in real-time to global events, and enable designers, developers, and analysts to make and share maps we’ve never dreamed of.

Delivering maps means delivering a model of the world that’s changing all the time and needs to automatically support the world’s edge cases – writing systems, fonts, local regulations, and global boundary disputes.

Our team maintains the highest-traffic read APIs at Mapbox and the distributed ETL pipelines used by internal and external customers to turn data into maps. We’re building new ways for people to visualize location data. Check out our Mapbox maps!

As AI becomes embedded in modern engineering workflows, we value engineers who can thoughtfully integrate AI into design, development, and decision-making. Our interview process will include discussion of how you use AI in your engineering workflow.

What You'll Do

As a Software Development Engineer II on the Maps API team, you will be responsible for balancing rapid development of new mapping tools against the reliability of our services as they scale into new request volumes, markets, and use cases. In a single week on the Maps API team, you might write application code robust to a world’s worth of data, build and deploy microservices, diagnose complex system behavior as global markets drive traffic in unexpected ways, or facilitate continuous delivery at Mapbox.

In this role, you can expect to:

• Lead your engineering team to identify and scope out well-defined tasks.

• Execute on the scope and be accountable for delivering on time with quality.

• Design systems and make architectural decisions that will keep pace with the rapid growth of Mapbox’s customer base.

• Mentor your peers through 1:1s, facilitating design and code reviews, and providing continuous guidance to foster professional growth and technical excellence.

• Promote a culture of operational excellence by meticulously testing and monitoring our systems and code, writing documentation, and being on-call to support the health of our services.

• Reduce technical debt, share your knowledge, and invest in your teammates’ health and happiness, while optimizing application performance and accelerating feature velocity.

• Uphold a culture of collaboration, transparency, creativity, inclusion, and data-driven decisions.

What We Believe are Important Traits for This Role

• 5+ years of experience building scalable high volume low latency backend services.

• Experience in our tech stack - Python, Typescript, Spark, Apache Ray, Iceberg, DuckDB, Parquet, Arrow, and native AWS (CDK, ECS, Step Functions, Lambda, S3, RDS, CloudWatch, CloudFront).

• Proficiency using AI as a sounding board and productivity multiplier while maintaining a trust but verify approach auditing AI-generated code for security, performance, and architectural integrity.

• Demonstrated ability to profile, tune, and optimize data systems for performance efficiency.

• Able to perform independently all the development tasks, based on designs and specs.

• Self-starter who is communication and outcomes-oriented.

• An empirical analytical approach. You develop strong hypotheses, conduct spikes, and clearly communicate your findings.

• A desire to share your expertise through documentation, mentorship, pairing, and both written and verbal discussion.

• A desire to work with and lead individuals with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.

• High quality mindset -- write unit tests, proactively remedy defects and follow through to production.

Nice to Have Traits for This Role

• Familiarity with both raster and vector geospatial data.

• Experience building global imagery mosaics.

• Experience building global terrain mosaics.

What We Value

In addition to our core values, which are not unique to this position and are necessary for Mapbox leaders:

• We value high-performing creative individuals who dig into problems and opportunities.

• We believe in individuals being their whole selves at work. We commit to this through supportive health care, parental leave, flexibility for the things that come up in life, and innovating on how we think about supporting our people.

• We emphasize an environment of teaching and learning to equip employees with the tools needed to be successful in their function and the company.

• We strongly believe in the value of growing a diverse team and encourage people of all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations to apply.

Our annual base compensation for this role ranges from $160,650 - $217,350 for most US locations and 5% to 10% higher for US locations with a higher cost of labor. Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), market demands, and specific work location. Please discuss your specific work location with your recruiter for more information.

By applying for this position, you acknowledge that you agree to the Mapbox Privacy Policy which is linked here.

Mapbox participates in E-Verify to confirm employee work authorization. Please refer to the Notice of E-Verify Participation and Right to Work posters for more information.

We are committed to a fair and equitable hiring process. We do not discriminate against any protected class.

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