Senior Backend Engineer - AI Natives Devices Cloud

About Life360

Life360’s mission is to keep people close to the ones they love. Our category-leading mobile app, Tile tracking devices, and Pet GPS tracker empower members to protect the people, pets, and things they care about most with a range of services, including location sharing, safe driver reports, and crash detection with emergency dispatch. Life360 serves approximately 97.8 million monthly active users (MAU), as of March 31, 2026, across more than 180 countries.

Life360 delivers peace of mind and enhances everyday family life with seamless coordination for all the moments that matter, big and small. By continuing to innovate and deliver for our customers, we have become a household name and the must-have mobile-based membership for families (and those friends who are basically family).

Life360 has more than 500 (and growing!) remote-first employees. For more information, please visit life360.com.

Life360 is a Remote First company, which means a remote work environment will be the primary experience for all employees. All positions, unless otherwise specified, can be performed remotely (within the US and Canada) regardless of any specified location above.

We are AI Native

We are building an AI native company where AI is an integral part of how we build and operate. AI tool usage during interviews varies by role. You may be asked to demonstrate proficiency with AI tools, discuss how you leverage AI, or complete interview exercises without AI assistance. Your Recruiter will provide clear guidance as you move through the interview process.

Undisclosed use of AI not previously discussed with or approved by your Recruiter may impact your candidacy.

About The Team

The Devices Cloud team owns the backend services that power Life360's fleet of connected hardware — Tile trackers, Jiobit wearables, Pet GPS trackers, and emerging device categories. We manage real-time device state, high-frequency telemetry ingest, and the cloud infrastructure that translates physical-world signals into reliable, family-facing experiences. Our work sits at the intersection of hardware, firmware, mobile, and platform — and runs at a scale where correctness and reliability aren't optional.

We are an AI-Native team. AI isn't an add-on to how we work — it's how we work. We've redesigned our development workflows around AI, using it as a first-class collaborator at every stage: spec writing, code generation, test authoring, incident triage, and system design. We ship faster and go deeper because of it. We're looking for engineers who want to help define what AI-native backend development looks like for complex, hardware-connected systems.

About The Job

As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Devices Cloud team, you will design and deliver the core cloud systems that power Life360's connected hardware — Tile trackers, Jiobit wearables, and emerging device categories. You own complete features and subsystems across real-time state management, high-frequency telemetry ingest, and the integration layer that connects physical hardware to family-facing experiences.

You operate with a high degree of autonomy. You participate in technical design, break down complex work, deliver accurate estimates, and lead medium-sized projects end to end. You partner closely with firmware, mobile, platform, and data teams, mentor junior engineers, and help raise the team's engineering standards. Your work shapes systems serving tens of millions of families daily.

You are also a strong practitioner of AI-native engineering. You use AI as a first-class collaborator across spec writing, coding, testing, and incident triage — and you share the practices that work so the whole team moves faster.

For candidates based in the US, the salary range for this position is $148,000 - $216,500 USD. For candidates based out of Canada, the salary range for this position is $171,500 to $201,000 CAD. Note: Please be aware that the job title for positions in Canada will be "Developer" in lieu of "Engineer." We take into consideration an individual's background and experience in determining final salary - therefore, base pay offered may vary considerably depending on geographic location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The compensation package includes a wide range of medical, dental, vision, financial, and other benefits, as well as equity.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and operate Devices Cloud services — device connectivity, telemetry ingest, state management, command/control, and data pipelines — ensuring they are scalable, secure, and reliable at Life360's scale.
• Own complete features and subsystems from technical design through production, breaking down complex work, identifying dependencies, and delivering accurate estimates.
• Apply AI-native engineering practices day to day: use AI assistants for spec writing, code generation, test coverage, and incident response, and share the prompting strategies that work with the team.
• Partner with firmware, mobile, product, and platform teams to define APIs and integration patterns that translate cleanly across the hardware-software boundary.
• Lead medium-sized, cross-functional initiatives, coordinating the work of other engineers and keeping delivery on track.
• Identify risks, bottlenecks, and security gaps in your areas of ownership, and build in the automation and tests that prevent regressions.
• Mentor junior engineers: coach them on structuring changes for review, conduct thorough code reviews, and help grow their skills.
• Communicate progress, trade-offs, and technical concepts clearly to peers, partner teams, and your manager.
• Write clear, concise technical specifications, and contribute to team documentation and knowledge sharing.
• Participate in on-call rotation and contribute to high-severity incident response and post-mortems.

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of experience building and operating backend or cloud infrastructure systems, ideally including some IoT, telematics, or hardware-adjacent work.
• Track record of owning complete features and subsystems, contributing to technical design, and leading medium-sized projects to delivery.
• Strong experience with cloud-native infrastructure (AWS: EKS, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, Kinesis, etc.), distributed systems, and data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience using AI coding assistants for substantive engineering work, with the judgment to review and own everything you ship.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers and helping raise team-wide engineering standards.
• Strong communication skills: able to explain technical concepts clearly to peers, partner teams, and managers.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and managing competing priorities within and across teams.
• Experience with high-frequency ingest systems, time-series data, and streaming platforms (Kafka, Kinesis, or similar).
• Bachelor’s Degree in a Technical field, or equivalent experience.

Nice to Have

• Experience with IoT, telematics, embedded, or firmware-adjacent systems.
• Background in SRE practices, reliability engineering, and progressive delivery.
• Familiarity with observability platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, DataDog).
• Experience contributing to industry conversations: open-source projects, conference talks, or technical publications.
• Knowledge of hardware/firmware communication protocols (MQTT, BLE, CoAP, etc.).

AI-Native Expectations

We use AI coding tools as a professional standard on this team. Here's what that means in practice:

• Daily use: You use AI coding assistants (we support Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot) for real, substantive tasks: analysis, coding, refactoring, testing, navigating codebases, and documentation. Not just research or autocomplete.
• Judgment and ownership: AI-generated code gets the same review you'd give any PR. You are accountable for everything you ship.
• Velocity: We expect senior engineers who use AI well to operate with meaningful leverage — doing more with the same time, taking on problems that would otherwise require a larger team.
• Team leadership: You share what works. You automate prompting strategies that others can build on and help teammates earlier in their AI workflow adoption get up to speed.
• Continuous learning: The tooling is changing fast. You stay current and bring recommendations to the team when something would meaningfully improve how we work.

Our Benefits

• Competitive pay and benefits.
• Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance plans (100% paid for US employees). We offer supplemental plans for medical and dental for Canadian employees.
• 401(k) plan with company matching program in the US and RRSP with DPSP plan for Canadian employees.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for mental wellness.
• Flexible PTO and 12 company wide days off throughout the year.
• Winter and Summer Weeklong Synchronized Company Shutdowns
• Learning & Development programs.
• Equipment, tools, and reimbursement support for a productive remote environment.
• Free Life360 Platinum Membership for your preferred circle.
• Free Tile Products

Life360 Values

Our company’s mission driven culture is guided by our shared values to create a trusted work environment where you can bring your authentic self to work and make a positive difference

• Be a Good Person - We have a team of high integrity people you can trust.
• Be Direct With Respect - We communicate directly, even when it’s hard.
• Members Before Metrics - We focus on building an exceptional experience for families.
• High Intensity High Impact - We do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Our Commitment to Diversity

We believe that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better results. Together, we continue to build an inclusive culture that encourages, supports, and celebrates the diverse voices of our employees. It fuels our innovation and connects us closer to our customers and the communities we serve. We strive to create a workplace that reflects the communities we serve and where everyone feels empowered to bring their authentic best selves to work.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at Life360. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any legally protected status.

We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. We believe that a diversity of perspectives and experiences create a foundation for the best ideas. Come join us in building something meaningful. Even if you don’t meet 100% of the below qualifications, you should still seriously consider applying!

Key skills/competency

• Backend Development
• Cloud Infrastructure
• AI-Native Engineering
• Distributed Systems
• Telemetry Ingest
• IoT/Hardware Integration
• Mentorship
• Technical Leadership
• Problem Solving
• Communication Skills