---
title: 'Principal Software Engineer I, Cloud at Cambridge Mobile Telematics'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-software-engineer-i-cloud-cambridge-mobile-telematics-chennai-ryqp1vaz3w2r'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-27'
---

# Principal Software Engineer I, Cloud at Cambridge Mobile Telematics

- **Company:** Cambridge Mobile Telematics
- **Location:** Chennai, India
- **Posted:** 2026-10-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-27
- **Apply:** https://www.cmtelematics.com/who-we-are/join-our-team/job-posting/?gh_jid=8262596

## Job description

CMT is seeking a collaborative, customer-committed, hands-on Principal Software Engineer I, Backend to join our Data & Platform group and strengthen the shared engineering foundation used across CMT. In this role, you will design and evolve scalable, reliable, and reusable platforms across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, developer tooling, observability, core services, messaging, and AI-enabled engineering capabilities. You will work across teams to establish practical architecture and engineering standards, improve reliability and developer experience, and build self-service capabilities that help CMT engineers develop, deploy, and operate products at scale. This role is based in Chennai and requires working from the CMT Chennai office three days per week.

Responsibilities:

- Lead the design and implementation of scalable, reliable backend services and APIs
- Use independent judgment to solve complex technical problems and make sound architectural decisions
- Provide technical direction for projects that span multiple services or teams
- Work with product managers, engineers, data teams, and other stakeholders to balance technical needs with customer and business requirements
- Design systems that balance reliability, performance, scalability, security, operability, and cost
- Identify and address performance bottlenecks, reliability issues, and recurring production problems
- Lead design and code reviews for complex changes and help maintain a high bar for engineering quality
- Improve engineering practices around testing, deployment, observability, and operational readiness
- Troubleshoot complex production issues and provide technical leadership during critical incidents when required
- Mentor engineers through design discussions, reviews, and day-to-day technical guidance
- Contribute to technical roadmaps and identify changes needed to support future scale and product requirements

Qualifications:

- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent years of experience and/or certification in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
- 7+ years of relevant professional software engineering experience
- Strong experience designing and building backend services, APIs, and distributed systems
- Proficiency in at least one backend programming language such as Python, Go, Java, or C++
- Strong understanding of relational databases, data modeling, schema design, and performance optimization
- Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS and services across compute, storage, databases, messaging, and serverless technologies
- Experience with automated testing, CI/CD, code reviews, and operating production systems
- Experience diagnosing complex production issues using logs, metrics, traces, and other observability tools
- Experience using AI-assisted development tools in day-to-day software engineering workflows
- Demonstrated ability to work independently on complex problems and influence technical decisions across teams
- Strong communication and collaboration skills

Nice to Haves:

- Experience building and operating high-throughput or large-scale backend systems
- Experience with event-driven architectures, message queues, or streaming systems
- Hands-on experience with Docker and container orchestration platforms such as ECS or Kubernetes
- Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Terragrunt
- Experience defining and operating service-level metrics, monitors, alerts, and SLOs
- Knowledge of application and API security, authentication, authorization, and secure service design
- Experience with data pipelines or backend systems that support analytics, machine learning, or large-scale data processing

Compensation and Benefits:

- Fair and competitive salary based on skills and experience including Provident Fund (PF), Corporate NPS, and a meal card program
- Equity may be awarded in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
- Medical Benefits (Health insurance, Personal accident insurance, Group term life insurance), gratuity, parental leave, sick/casual leave, leave encashments, and public holidays
- Employees are eligible for flexible allowances which includes Leave Travel Assistance, Telephone/Mobile Expenses, Professional development expenses, Meals Coupon, Vehicle Reimbursement
- Flexible scheduling and hybrid work arrangements, as appropriate based on role and responsibilities.

Additional Perks:

- Work on a mission with real impact: crashes prevented, injuries avoided, lives protected around the world
- Join an industry leader — 65+ million drivers protected, powering 140+ programs across 25 countries
- Recognized innovator in mobility AI, earning top honors including the TIME Industry Leader in AI, a Gold Edison Award, and the Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award for AI for Social Good. CMT is also Great Place to Work Certified
- Be part of the team inventing the future of mobility and road safety
- Move fast, own outcomes, do work that matters
- High ownership, small teams, and direct access to leadership — no layers between your work and its impact
- Summer Fridays provide team members with half days to recharge
- Join one of our employee resource groups: Black, AAPI, LGBTQIA+, Women, Book Club, and Health & Wellness
- Comprehensive wellness, education, and employee assistance programs

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:

At CMT, we believe the best ideas come from a mix of backgrounds and perspectives.

We are an equal-opportunity employer committed to creating a workplace and culture where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to bring their unique talents and perspectives. Diversity is essential to our success, and we actively seek candidates from all backgrounds to join our growing team.

We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability state. CMT is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. To learn more, visit www.cmtelematics.com and follow us on Instagram @cmt.ai

About Cambridge Mobile Telematics:

Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) is the world’s largest telematics and AI company for safer mobility. Its mission is to make the world’s roads and drivers safer. The company’s AI-driven platform, DriveWell Fusion®, proactively identifies and reduces driving risk, leading to fewer crashes and injuries. To date, CMT’s technology has helped prevent over 126,000 crashes worldwide. CMT enables partners to measure risk, detect crashes, provide life-saving assistance, and streamline claims. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, CMT operates globally with offices in Budapest, Hungary; Chennai, India; Seattle, Washington; Tokyo, Japan; and Zagreb, Croatia. Learn more at www.cmt.ai.

## About Cambridge Mobile Telematics

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) makes roads safer by using mobile sensing, IoT, machine learning, and behavioral science to power telematics programs for insurers, automakers, and mobility providers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (received a $350M strategic investment from TPG and Allianz)
- **Headquarters**: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (on the MIT campus)
- **Founded**: 2010 (spun out of the MIT CarTel research project, which began in 2004)
- **Founders**: Hari Balakrishnan, Sam Madden, William V. (Bill) Powers

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Telematics, mobility AI, auto insurance technology, road safety
- Target customers: B2B – insurers, automakers, fleets, cellular carriers, and mobility providers (enterprise / large organizations)
- Mission: To measure progress by how many crashes are prevented, using AI to proactively identify and lower driving risk.

## Products & Services
Each offering is part of the **DriveWell** platform:
- **DriveWell Atlas**: A foundation model for mobility intelligence that learns the physics of force, motion, and trajectory from multimodal sensor data to enable risk assessment, crash detection, and personalized coaching.
- **DriveWell Risk**: Uses sensor data and advanced AI to precisely measure driving behavior, enabling insurers to reward safer drivers with lower premiums.
- **DriveWell Crash & Claims**: Detects accidents in real time and sends emergency help; streamlines the claims process for faster resolution.
- **DriveWell Engage**: Motivates safer driving through personalized, real-time feedback and incentives – proven to reduce distracted driving by 20%, hard braking by 9%, and injury-related claims by 5.5%.
- **DriveWell Tag**: A fully wireless IoT device (launched first of its kind) to measure driving behavior.
- **Universal Driving Score**: A new unified scoring system for drivers across different programs (being scaled with the TPG/Allianz investment).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (company is private; $350M strategic investment led by TPG and Allianz in 2025)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding includes $350M strategic investment; company describes itself as “profitable, growing” on its careers page.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: TPG, Allianz (long-term commercial agreements with Allianz entities across Europe), plus partnerships with major insurers, fleets, OEMs, and mobility providers.
- **Growth Signals**:  
  - Platform powers safe driving programs for **tens of millions of drivers** (over 65 million drivers worldwide as of 2025).  
  - To date, CMT’s technology has helped prevent **126,000 crashes** and **68,000 injuries**.  
  - DriveWell Engage reduces distracted driving by 20%, hard braking by 9%, and injury-related claims by 5.5%.  
  - First mobile usage-based insurance product launched in 2012; now regulatory approval in 49 U.S. states for its Premium Score.  
  - Offices in the US (Cambridge, MA), India (Chennai), Hungary, and Croatia (Zagreb).  
  - Headcount growing: over 140 employees (per careers page) with open roles across AI, engineering, product, and customer solutions.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Foundation model for mobility**: DriveWell Atlas is a breakthrough time-series transformer trained on proprietary multimodal sensor data (phone, vehicle, IoT) – learns the “why” behind driving behavior, not just what happened.
- **Privacy-first by design**: Consumers opt in and can opt out at any time; CMT does not sell driving data to third parties.
- **Deep sensor fusion**: Combines data from phones, vehicles, and IoT devices for a unified view of driving behavior, enabling accurate risk assessment and crash reconstruction.
- **Proven real-world impact**: Over a decade of production experience with measurable safety outcomes (crashes prevented, injuries avoided, claim cost reduction).
- **MIT heritage**: Founders are renowned MIT professors (Hari Balakrishnan, Sam Madden) with deep academic and industry expertise in mobile systems, sensing, and AI.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale the global road safety platform** – leveraging the $350M TPG/Allianz investment to expand internationally, especially in Europe.
- **Advance AI models** for real-time driving risk assessment, crash detection, and personalized coaching, driven by the DriveWell Atlas foundation model.
- **Grow adoption of the Universal Driving Score** across insurers, OEMs, and mobility partners to create a consistent, privacy-respecting measure of driving risk.
- **Commercial expansion** with Allianz entities across Europe to deliver data-driven insurance and service offerings.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Mission**: “What we build saves lives.” – employees work on hard problems that directly reduce crashes and injuries.
- **Work Model**: On-site at headquarters (MIT campus in Cambridge, MA) with offices in India, Hungary, and Croatia. “Summer Fridays” (half days from Memorial Day to Labor Day) and free lunch three days a week.
- **Compensation & Benefits**: Competitive base salary, performance bonus, and RSUs. 80% medical, dental, and vision coverage for employee and family, 401(k) with company match, unlimited PTO, 16 weeks paid parental leave for primary caregivers (4 weeks secondary), $3,600/year education and learning budget.
- **Engineering Culture**: Small teams, direct access to leadership, serious budget for compute. “The playbook doesn’t exist yet” – employees help define the next decade of mobility AI. Open roles in AI research, engineering, product, design, finance, and customer solutions.
- **Growth Opportunity**: Profitable, growing company where your work runs in production and shows up on real roads. Co-founders are active in the business (Hari Balakrishnan as CTO/Chairman, Sam Madden as Chief Scientist) and leaders are accessible.

## Sources
1. [cmtelematics.com](https://www.cmtelematics.com/)
2. [cmtelematics.com/who-we-are](https://www.cmtelematics.com/who-we-are/)
3. [cmtelematics.com/who-we-are/join-our-team](https://www.cmtelematics.com/who-we-are/join-our-team/)
4. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cambridge-mobile-telematics)
5. [Indeed.com](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Cambridge-Mobile-Telematics-1)

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