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Staff Software Engineer

Alarm.com
Location
Boston, Massachusetts
Posted
24 days ago
Department
Software Engineering
What they actually want (must-haves)
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 10+ years of backend software engineering experience, with a demonstrated track record of operating at Staff-level scope and impact.
  • Proven experience leading large, multi-engineer technical initiatives end-to-end — from architecture through delivery — with a high degree of autonomy and accountability for outcomes.
  • Demonstrated ability to define and evolve reusable platform patterns, shared libraries, or integration frameworks that are actually adopted and used by other engineers.
  • Strong architectural judgment: ability to reason about service boundaries, domain ownership, failure modes, versioning, and long-term maintainability.
  • Deep proficiency in backend platform engineering: RESTful and/or gRPC APIs, distributed systems, event-driven architectures (Kafka or equivalent), and shared platform design.
Nice to have
  • Strong experience with .NET/C# and SQL Server; this is the foundation of Alarm.com's backend stack, though equivalent depth in similar ecosystems may translate well.
  • Experience building or evolving partner-facing APIs, external integration platforms, or shared internal platform capabilities consumed by multiple teams.
  • Hands-on experience with Kafka or similar event streaming infrastructure — including schema design, consumer patterns, and operational considerations at scale.
  • Experience with device-oriented systems, IoT platforms, device lifecycle management, or integration-heavy backend architectures — including transport protocols, device provisioning flows, and the challenges of connecting physical hardware to cloud platforms at scale.
  • Experience with microservice or domain-aligned architecture patterns, including domain analysis, service boundary definition, and incremental migration from monolithic systems.
What the job really is

The Staff Software Engineer at Alarm.com will lead technical initiatives across the Strategic Partner eXcellence and Device Platform teams, focusing on enhancing backend systems and integrations. This role emphasizes architectural leadership, cross-team collaboration, and the development of reusable frameworks to improve engineering efficiency and system reliability. The Staff SE will actively participate in engineering leadership initiatives and mentor other engineers, driving technical alignment and operational excellence across the organization.

Benefits
  • Medical plans with company subsidies
  • Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution
  • 401(k) with an employer match
  • Paid vacation that increases with tenure
  • Paid holidays
  • Wellness time
Things to weigh
  • The role requires a strong focus on technical leadership and mentorship, which may not suit those looking for a purely execution-focused position.
  • The position emphasizes AI-assisted development tools as a core part of the engineering workflow, which may require adaptation for those unfamiliar with such tools.
  • The job involves significant cross-team collaboration, which may be challenging for candidates who prefer independent work.
  • The role has a broad technical scope, which could be overwhelming for those who prefer a more specialized focus.
Job score3.8/5
Benefits5/5
Freshness4/5
Career value5/5
Role clarity5/5
Pay transparency0/5

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