Senior Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer - Grounded
Detroit, MI (in-person)
About Grounded
Grounded is a 25-person Detroit-based startup building modular electric platforms for specialty vehicles. We take cab chassis from OEMs like Ford and Harbinger and build configurable vehicle systems on top, serving mobile healthcare, RVs, command centers, food and beverage, pet care, and more. Our customers include Colgate, Nokia, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and Portland PD. We've raised ~$5M in VC funding and are shipping vehicles in market today.
We also build our own software: a mobile app, fleet dashboard, and onboard computer system that lets customers monitor and control vehicle systems remotely. We design, fabricate, and assemble everything in-house at our facility in Corktown.
The Role
We're hiring a senior software engineer to build the software that makes a Grounded vehicle smart: our mobile app, fleet dashboard, and onboard computer system that let customers monitor and control their vehicles remotely. You'll also help us tackle our biggest internal challenge - automating the design and manufacturing workflow so we can scale mass customization (parametric design, dynamic BOM generation, automated work instructions, and a customer-facing configurator).
It's a broad, full-stack role at a hardware company: from onboard systems and telemetry, to the app and dashboard customers use every day, to internal tools that let a salesperson configure a vehicle without an engineer touching it.
What you'd actually do
Build and own features across our mobile app, fleet dashboard, and onboard computer / telemetry system
Design the data models and APIs that connect vehicles in the field to the dashboard and app
Build internal tooling to automate design-to-manufacturing: programmatic/parametric CAD generation, dynamic BOMs, automated work instructions, and a configurator
Work closely with mechanical and electrical engineers to turn physical systems into software (sensors, controls, monitoring)
Own features end to end - design, build, ship, and iterate on real customer and shop-floor feedback
Make pragmatic architecture decisions for a small team moving fast
What we're looking for
7+ years building and shipping production software, full-stack
Strong in a modern web stack (e.g. React/TypeScript, Node, a relational database) and comfortable across frontend, backend, and APIs
Pragmatic and product-minded; you can own ambiguous problems end to end
Comfortable working at the hardware/software boundary - telemetry, devices, or IoT
Startup or small-company experience strongly preferred: you ship, you own, you don't need layers of process
Nice-to-haves
Embedded / IoT / fleet telemetry experience
Experience with CAD automation, parametric design, or CPQ/configurator systems
Cloud infrastructure and data-pipeline experience
Compensation
Competitive base salary + meaningful equity in Grounded + comprehensive health insurance
Why this role is different
You'll be the software person at a company that builds physical vehicles - so your work spans the app in a customer's hand, the computer onboard the vehicle, and the internal tools that decide how fast the whole company can scale. Few software roles let you touch hardware, product, and core operations at once, with this much ownership and direct access to the leadership team.