Alarm.com Staff Software Engineer at Alarm.com serving as a technical multiplier across Strategic Partner eXcellence and Device Platform domains. Owns complex initiatives and shapes architectural direction.
Responsibilities
We are hiring a Staff Software Engineer to serve as a technical multiplier across the SPX and Device Platform domains.
At Alarm.com, the Staff SE carries a distinct mandate: to make the engineers and systems around them measurably better. This is not primarily a project execution role. The Staff SE owns technically complex, high-visibility initiatives end-to-end, shapes architectural direction across domain boundaries, builds reusable frameworks and patterns that other teams depend on, and helps the organization move faster with more consistency and less rework.
Projects spearheaded by a Staff SE carry feature-team-level scope — visible work spanning the organization, often requiring cross-team collaboration and sustained technical leadership. The Staff SE anticipates medium-term technical problems 12+ months out and works proactively to prevent them from becoming delivery or reliability issues. They are active participants in engineering leadership initiatives — tech councils, working groups, cross-team design forums — not passive consumers of information.
Success in this role requires deep technical judgment in backend and platform engineering, the ability to operate across ambiguity and cross-team dependencies, and the credibility to influence technical direction alongside architects, engineering managers, and senior engineers across the department. This is a hands-on role — the Staff SE writes code, leads designs, and drives delivery — but their highest-leverage contribution is the clarity, reusability, and quality they bring to systems and teams beyond their immediate scope.
Technical Leadership & Architecture
Own the technical direction for complex, cross-cutting initiatives spanning device APIs and event pipelines, device lifecycle management, device transport and protocol infrastructure, and partner-facing platform capabilities.
Lead architectural design for medium-to-large initiatives, producing high-quality design documents that capture tradeoffs, constraints, and long-term implications — not just the chosen approach.
Define and evolve shared platform patterns, API contracts, and event schemas that are used by multiple teams across the department.
Anticipate medium-term architectural risks — 12+ months out — and work proactively to prevent them from negatively impacting the team or the platform.
Contribute to and influence department-wide technical standards, modernization guidance, and platform conventions — participating in tech councils, working groups, and cross-team design reviews as an active contributor, not a passive observer.
Platform & Systems Delivery
Lead delivery of foundational platform capabilities across the device ecosystem: device state and command APIs, device lifecycle management, event-driven pipelines, and the transport and protocol infrastructure that connects physical devices to the platform.
Qualification
What Good Looks Like at This LevelA Staff SE at AlarmDepth — owning a technologyBachelor's degree in Computer ScienceProven experience leading largeStrong architectural judgmentStrong experience withExperience with device-oriented systemsExperience with observability practices
Required
What Good Looks Like at This Level
A Staff SE at Alarm.com is a technical leader whose impact is unmistakably felt beyond their immediate scope. The clearest signal is multiplier impact: a Staff SE's technical contributions, reusable patterns, and engineering judgment make the teams and systems around them measurably better. They drive initiatives of feature-team-level scope, are capable of seeing current problems and upcoming architectural improvements and driving toward solutions with minimal management support, and are a trusted voice in cross-team technical conversations.
The Staff SE operates via two complementary modes:
Depth — owning a technology, framework, or component that a meaningful number of other engineers build on, evangelizing it, and making it easy to use and extend; or
Breadth — being responsible for the technical direction of a broad set of code and sub-teams, setting a technical roadmap, identifying gaps, and making other engineers more efficient and productive through their projects, designs, and guidance.
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 — not just built.
Strong architectural judgment: ability to reason about service boundaries, domain ownership, failure modes, versioning, and long-term maintainability — not just immediate implementation choices.
Deep proficiency in backend platform engineering: RESTful and/or gRPC APIs, distributed systems, event-driven architectures (Kafka or equivalent), and shared platform design.
Experience operating in environments moving from tightly coupled systems toward domain-aligned, independently deployable services.
Preferred
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.
Experience with observability practices, incident management, and production operations at scale — including defining monitoring frameworks and support models for externally consumed systems.
Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) in a structured, disciplined workflow — including multi-file refactors, spec-driven development, and test-driven AI usage.
