Senior Staff Software Engineer

Who we are

The real world is the next frontier, and at Metropolis, we are creating the artificial intelligence to make it responsive. We are pioneering the Recognition Economy — a future where mundane repetition disappears and being known unlocks access, comfort, and belonging everywhere you go. From transforming parking into a seamless drive-in, drive-out experience for millions of Members to expanding our intelligence layer across retail and hospitality, we are building a world that feels instinctive and magical. The future isn't coming; it's here, and we need builders, innovators, and problem solvers to help us create it.

Who you are

Metropolis is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer, Recognition Platform to serve as the technical owner of the Metropolis Recognition Platform (MRP). You are the engineer other engineers route their hardest architectural questions to, holding the entire platform architecture in your head and navigating cross-functional boundaries across application engineering, computer vision, data, security, and platform teams as well as external partners. In this role, you will lead the evolution of high-volume edge-to-cloud pipelines and decisioning systems that transform physical-world sensor signals into real-time actions, setting technical direction, establishing architectural RFCs, and driving cross-functional alignment without needing formal reporting authority.

What you'll do

• Lead end-to-end architecture across edge ingestion, identity resolution, decisioning, notification, and operator surfaces while driving spec-driven development through RFCs and managing roadmap sequencing
• Drive cross-functional alignment and resolve ownership ambiguities across application, CV/ML, data, security, and platform engineering teams as well as external partner integrations
• Evolve high-volume edge-to-cloud streaming pipelines on a horizontally scalable backbone, engineering for tail latency, intermittent connectivity, backpressure, and out-of-order events
• Design rules and decisioning layers for real-time actions including watchlist alerting, arrival routing, eligibility, consent gating, frequency capping, and next-best-action logic
• Balance deterministic logic with probabilistic signals by establishing explicit thresholds, quantitative cost reasoning for recognition errors, and replay harnesses for model testing
• Architect privacy, identity, and consent models designed for biometric-regulated environments with bounded-time opt-out propagation in close collaboration with Legal and Security
• Own production quality by defining SLOs, actionable alerting, runbooks, soak testing, and progressive rollout via feature flags
• Elevate technical standards through design reviews, code reviews, mentorship, and AI-native engineering workflows

What we're looking for

• 12+ years of experience building and operating distributed, data-intensive production systems, including deep experience as a multi-service platform technical owner
• Proven track record of cross-functional technical leadership and aligning independent engineering teams on shared architecture
• Expert proficiency in a JVM language such as Java or Scala, alongside fluency in event-driven and service-oriented design using gRPC/protobuf, streaming, and relational data modeling
• Hands-on experience designing high-throughput ingestion pipelines with deep understanding of delivery semantics, idempotency, ordering, backpressure, and tail latency
• Experience building rules, eligibility, or decisioning systems where deterministic logic coexists with probabilistic or model-driven signals
• Strong systems judgment integrating third-party APIs, SDKs, and vendor constraints
• Excellent written technical communication skills with a track record of writing decisive RFCs
• Comfortable navigating physical-world deployment constraints, hardware conditions, and operational messiness beyond staging environments
• Deep understanding of observability, automated testing, progressive delivery, and fluency with AI-assisted engineering tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot in daily workflows

While not required, these are a plus:

• Experience with computer vision, biometric matching, or sensor-fusion systems, specifically reasoning about confidence, thresholds, and drift
• Background operating in privacy- or biometric-regulated domains such as BIPA, CCPA, or GDPR, or working with consent-management systems
• Experience with IoT, edge computing, fleet-scale device telemetry, or MQTT-class transports
• Expertise in identity resolution or customer data platforms, stitching multi-system signals into durable profiles
• Experience with hospitality, retail, or physical-operations software, including hospitality CRM and PMS integrations
• Prior experience in a Uber-tech-lead, TL-of-TLs, or principal-adjacent scope

Our Stack

• Languages + Frameworks: TypeScript, React, Scala (principally), Java (limited)
• Datastores: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Snowflake
• Cloud: AWS
• Version control: Git & GitHub
• AI Tooling: Copilot on GitHub and Claude Code
• Observability: Datadog

4 Days in Office: Metropolis values in-person collaboration to drive innovation, strengthen culture, and enhance the Member experience. Our corporate team members hold to our office-first model, which requires employees to be on-site at least four days a week, fostering organic interactions that spark creativity and connection

When you join Metropolis, you'll join a team of world-class product leaders and engineers, building an ecosystem of technologies at the intersection of parking, mobility, and real estate. Our goal is to build an inclusive culture where everyone has a voice and the best idea wins. You will play a key role in building and maintaining this culture as our organization grows. The anticipated base salary for this position is $232,000 - $268,000 USD annually. The actual base salary offered is determined by a number of variables, including, as appropriate, the applicant's qualifications for the position, years of relevant experience, distinctive skills, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and the location of residence and/or place of employment. Base salary is one component of Metropolis' total compensation package, which may also include access to or eligibility for healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan, short-term and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, a lucrative stock option plan, bonus plans, and more. #LI-LR1 #LI-Onsite