Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an Alphabet company with a mission to radically improve urban life. We aim to create inclusive, large-scale communities by bringing together an innovative planning approach, products and services designed to address urban challenges, and capital for real estate and advanced infrastructure. 

Since our founding in 2015, we've grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York and Toronto. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

To date, we've incubated and invested in multiple companies focused on solving city problems, and we've launched the Sidewalk Toronto project, which aims to create a community along Toronto's waterfront that achieves new standards of sustainability, affordability, and economic opportunity for all.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for inclusive growth, our work is both highly exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

What is the role?

You will use your background and experience in system integration and engineering in order to further the technical design, engineering, and integration of digital systems (including engineering technical standards, protocols, and APIs) for Sidewalk Labs’ systems deployed in real estate development projects and in urban environments more broadly. 

In some cases, the Systems Engineering team will be the project lead on a system; in other cases, you will be supporting other teams’ work on topics such as mobility, energy systems, and civic engagement. At times, you will work with colleagues focused on commercializing our systems as well as colleagues who will be using design techniques to understand customers and their needs.

In this role, you will be responsible for:

• Overseeing the integration and engineering of digital systems within buildings and our physical developments, with specific attention to data sharing, cybersecurity, resiliency, and relevant technical standards, and in accordance with SWL’s responsible data use guidelines. Relevant systems include building controls and management systems, device naming schemas, lighting, air quality, access control, connectivity, electrical distribution, BIM systems feeding a digital twin, and more. For these types of systems, familiarity with their features and limitations, new technologies and ideas to overcome these limitations to disrupt and radically improve outcomes.
• Identifying digitally-enabled services and digital infrastructure as part of developing an innovation plan that achieves a project’s unique objectives.
• Installation, configuration, and testing of digitally-enabled services and digital infrastructure.
• Maintaining system diagrams, naming ontologies, and software codebases that can be used for troubleshooting, future expansion and general understanding of a development’s digital components. 
• Establish technical digital standards, including protocols, data schemas, APIs, and other relevant standards.
• Managing technical pilots in buildings and public spaces. 
• Assisting teams led by topic experts (in fields such as mobility, energy, etc) on the technical needs of the systems they are envisioning and buildings.

What You Will Achieve

After 3 months

• You will be well-versed in the vision for Digital Architecture and Sidewalk Urban Systems, Sidewalk’s responsible data use practices, and familiar with the full breadth of digitally-enabled innovations and systems that Sidewalk has contemplated for its development projects, and be comfortable communicating internally and externally about key pieces.
• You will have successfully integrated with Planning and Design teams and helped plan the digital architecture and system design workstreams to ensure smooth execution and timeliness of deliverables. 
• You will have identified key existing or needed digital standards that are crucial to executing Sidewalk’s vision, and began to sketch out a strategy for how to incorporate them holistically into our engineering work, and have proactively engaged with relevant standards bodies to advance our point of view.

After 6 months

• Independently manage consultant engineering teams and vendors responsible for advancing all aspects of our work.
• Substantially advanced the Digital Architecture strategy, collaborating effectively with other teams to ensure our innovations will deliver the projected outcomes and generate value. Where appropriate, you will prototype systems.
• You will have formulated and advanced a “Digital Architecture” kit of parts (consisting of standards, APIs, etc) that is increasingly incorporated into project proposals, procurements, prototypes and advanced infrastructure system specifications and implementations.
• You will be proactive and working collaboratively to continue to refine the vision and implement execution strategies for Digital Architecture.
• You will have worked with one initiative outside of Digital Architecture to help that team on the technology aspects of their business.

What We Expect

Strong project management skills. 

• Proven ability to manage complex projects with multiple internal and external stakeholders; to receive direction and anticipate next steps; to think through, communicate, document, organize, and execute on project goals and keep other team members on schedule. 

Strong system engineering & technical integration skills.

• Able to create a system architecture diagram showing interconnects among multiple systems at the physical and process levels.
• The ability to take siloed data, build a standardized method to make it accessible and shared across multiple systems using SQL and graph databases.
• Able to choose the right algorithms, systems approaches and patterns to solve problems, without reinventing the wheel.
• Candidates need to be able to hit the ground running. Therefore, we generally look for 7+ years of industry experience in a world-class engineering organization.
• Experience with Python and at least one systems programming language (C++, Java, or Go).
• Experience with a cloud hosting provider (Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Azure, etc.).

Act as a technologist.

• Bias towards action and shipping. Once you’ve sketched out an idea, you find the fastest path to a prototype to prove the concept.
• Strong ability to write code quickly.
• You are obsessed with privacy and constantly ask how we can build privacy into product design.
• Be comfortable with a range of languages and open source tools and frameworks, and make good decisions about which to use to solve a particular problem. You are excited to learn something new when the need arises. 
• Be creative: you’ll come up with new ideas based on your broad understanding of technological possibilities and city domain knowledge. 

Solve problems, together.

• You come up with novel solutions.
• You are confident in the technologists’ contribution to problem-solving, but also value other kinds of expertise.
• You are willing and eager to explain technology to non-technologists; and are willing to learn other relevant topics from your colleagues.
• You are willing and able to adapt your working style when you are working across disciplines.
• You ask hard questions and challenge assumptions to ensure that we’re solving the right problems.
• Have flexibility to work on the team’s most pressing problems.

We are very excited to hear from you.

The community of the future is a place for everyone, and Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to apply. All employment is based on merit and business need.