Principal Software Engineer

Compensation & Logistics

• Salary: $375K - $965K
• Employment Type: FullTime
• Location Type: Remote
• Location: North America & Canada (remote)
• Base Salary: $375,000
• Total Compensation: $815,000 - $965,000
• Note: The range listed reflects compensation for U.S.-based employees working in our San Francisco or New York City offices. For remote U.S. hires or candidates outside the U.S., compensation will be adjusted to align with the local market and cost of living.

About Motion

Motion operates under two assumptions about the future of work:

1. AI will do 100x more work over the next decade
2. Humans will always be needed for oversight, strategy, and the toughest decisions

To manage this future, there must be a system that lets a single human manage 100x more work, done by both AI and people. That’s what we’re building at Motion.

We spent the past 5 years building the best automated project management software—an AI project manager that eliminates reactive project management. Motion predicts what will get done early or late, automatically coordinates the right person to do the highest impact task at the right time, and ensures no steps are missed.

The real moat in AI agents is context: whoever has the most data to let the system think and work exactly like their users will win. Motion already has a lead: tasks, projects, docs, meetings, calendars, and communication all live in one place, making us best equipped to swap out human work for AI technology improves. Integrating all these systems seamlessly is incredibly hard, but we're uniquely capable of doing this because we are one of the most operationally excellent companies in the world.

With backing from YC and Sam Altman, a $500M+ valuation, and hundreds of thousands of users, we’re well positioned to lead. Now we’re building agents that work with extreme accuracy and unlock an order-of-magnitude boost in productivity.

Motion isn’t a 9–5. It’s intense, fast, and not for everyone. But if you want to work with top talent, learn fast, and help redefine how work gets done—you’ll thrive here.

About The Role

Motion is hiring an experienced software engineer who can make key technical decisions and implement large software projects to help Motion scale the next 2 orders of magnitude. The role may be frontend, backend, or full-stack, whichever suits your background.

We work hard to ensure Motion’s engineering team is one of the highest talent-density teams in the world. We have accomplished in weeks or months what it would take larger teams years to do. There are many initiatives on our product roadmap we know will make Motion deliver orders of magnitude more value to customers. As an engineer on our team, you will work on Motion's highest impact projects and have ownership over major parts of the product code.

What Makes a Successful Engineer at Motion

• Ambition and Continuous Improvement: Always looking for ways to improve. This role will offer more responsibilities than you've likely had before, with higher standards than other companies. Expect to work your hardest and do the best work of your career at Motion. You will receive ample coaching and feedback to foster growth.
• Ownership and Ambiguity Tolerance: Ability to take ownership of projects, lead them to completion, and navigate ambiguity by finding the right balance between speed and quality. You can define project goals and fill in the blanks without needing every detail and edge case explicitly defined.
• Fast Learning and Adaptability: Ability to quickly familiarize yourself with a complex product and codebase. You are comfortable tackling any part of the stack or learning new, unfamiliar technologies. You understand that working in a startup involves managing tech debt.
• Impact-Oriented: Strong understanding of how to create the most impact, avoiding getting lost in non-essential details. You are excited to work on whatever solves the biggest customer problems.