Senior Software Engineer

This position is eligible for telework, which is currently 2 days per week. New hires are eligible to apply 30 days after their effective date of hire.

Opening

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is North America's largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile travel area surrounding New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut. The MTA network comprises the nation’s largest bus fleet and more subway and commuter rail cars than all other U.S. transit systems combined. MTA strives to provide a safe and reliable commute, excellent customer service, and rewarding opportunities.

About Us

The MTA transportation network has a very large system and infrastructure for financial, business, automated train, transportation, power, and physical security. The MTA IT Department is centrally responsible for providing a full range of Information and Operational Technology services to the MTA agencies and administrative units through its operating and support units. Services are provided on a 7/24/365 basis in support of the MTA organization and its ridership.

MTA IT’s Product Development group is empowered, multi-functional teams focused on the end-to-end management of development products from strategy to delivery. Using innovative processes and tools, the teams are responsible for developing and maintaining highly effective, secure, and innovative transportation, operational, and back-end information systems to support MTA goals and priorities.

Summary

Leads requirements management, software design, and engineering, and testing activities across all stages and iterations of medium complexity software development. Role is responsible for using defined models, methods, and tools. May own medium impact/value services or products.

Critical Skills:

Core iOS Engineering

• Expert in Swift, Objective-C, and Xcode - mastery of both languages is essential.
• Deep experience with iOS frameworks: UIKit, Core Data, Core Animation, SwiftUI.
• Extensive hands-on use of camera frameworks for photo capture, ID scanning, and barcode scanning.
• Familiar with VisionKit/Vision Framework for OCR, barcode, and text recognition.
• Strong experience building offline-first mobile apps with resilient local storage (SQLite/Core Data).
• Solid understanding of MVC, MVVM, VIPER, Clean Architecture, modularization, and domain-driven design.

Hardware Integration

• Direct experience integrating Bluetooth/BLE printers, including:
  • Zebra ZQ-series (ZQ310, ZQ511 preferred)
  • Zebra iOS SDK
  • BLE communication protocols
• Ability to manage printer operational states: low battery, jams, no paper, timeouts, and connection loss.

Security & Compliance

• Knowledge of mobile app hardening, anti-tamper measures, and secure local data handling.
• Experience with MDM solutions (Intune, AirWatch, Jamf) for enterprise deployment.
• Familiarity with certificate pinning, secure key storage, encrypted storage, and secure enclave patterns.
• Experience implementing SSO via OIDC, OAuth 2.0, and SAML provider SDKs.
• Strong knowledge of secure authentication and data protection: OAuth, JWT, Keychain, encryption.

Backend Communication

• Strong experience integrating with backend services via REST/GraphQL APIs, supporting secure real-time and near–real-time synchronization through Azure services, data warehouses, and relational databases.
• Skilled in retry logic, conflict resolution, offline/online reconciliation, and data integrity guarantees.

User Experience

• Skilled in creating responsive, accessible, high-performance UI/UX.
• Ability to design field-friendly interfaces optimized for:
  • Large touch targets
  • Low-interaction workflows
  • Glove-friendly usage
• Knowledgeable in ADA and accessibility compliance for mobile applications.

Quality, Analytics & Delivery

• Proficient in structured testing (unit, integration, system, regression, TDD) using XCTest and XCUITest.
• Knowledgeable in App Store Connect, provisioning profiles, signing, TestFlight, and release workflows.
• Experience collaborating with product owners and field officers to refine operational use cases.
• Hands-on experience with DevOps/DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub/GitLab, Jenkins, Bitrise), and dependency managers (SPM, CocoaPods, Carthage).
• Experienced with APNs, Firebase, and cloud analytics for telemetry, diagnostics, and notifications.

Responsibilities

• Leads requirements management, software design, and engineering, and testing activities across all stages and iterations of medium complexity software development and integration initiatives, using agreed models, methods, and tools. Assists with the organization's selection, adaptation, and adoption of new models, methods, and tools. Collaborates across parties involved in product, systems, or service design.
• May own medium impact/value services or products. Defines, documents, and executes medium-sized projects within business objectives and resource constraints, ensuring adherence to agreed enterprise architectures, and the application of effective change- release-, risk, and quality-management processes.
• Maintains software support processes and documentation and applies software management tools to investigate and resolve moderately complex issues, prioritize, diagnose incidents, collect system statistics, and create reports.
• Develops system and acceptance testing criteria related to functional and non-functional requirements, user stories, features, business processes, and business rules. Designs, specifies, and executes test cases and scenarios.
• Adept in applying agreed tools and techniques to evaluate user experiences of programs and products, and validate that usability, accessibility, and visual design requirements are satisfied.
• Develops, maintains, and applies tools and documentation to track, log, and maintain accurate and complete system information. Audits medium-complexity software systems for adherence to configuration standards.
• Plans and conducts assigned assurance assessments and suggests opportunities for quality and safety improvement. Contributes to the identification, analysis, and documentation of software-related safety risks and proposes corrective actions.
• Monitors supplier performance and customer satisfaction. Engages proactively and collaboratively with suppliers to resolve incidents and problems.
• Continuously develops and maintains adept knowledge of software engineering practices, emerging trends, and technologies.
• Provides technical advice to project teams and mentors less experienced staff to foster talent development.
• Travel may be required to other MTA locations or other external sites.
• May need to work outside of normal work hours supporting 24/7 operations (i.e., evenings and weekends).
• Performs other duties and tasks as assigned.
• Provides technical advice to project teams and mentors less experienced staff to foster talent development.
• Observing the work performed by the contractor.
• Reviewing invoices and approving them if the work meets contractual standards.
• Addressing performance issues with the contractor when possible.
• Escalating issues to other parties as needed.
• Regular and reliable attendance is expected and required.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 5 years of relevant experience. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• Experience: 5 years
• Certification(s): Requires at least one certification in the current platform/domain/technical skill. Possible certifications could be, but are not limited to:

Technical Skills

• Advanced programming experience in a business setting.
• Adept proficiency in at least one software engineering methodology, including but not limited to: Waterfall, Agile, Scrum, DevOps, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, Lean, Rapid Application Development (RAD).
• Adept programming experience with programming language(s) such as, but not limited to, Ruby, Python, Java, C, C++, C#, COBOL, SQL, Net, DBA, JavaScript.
• Adept with the Oracle platform.
• Adept in applying a structured validation and testing method, including but not limited to: Unit Testing, Integration Testing, System Testing, Acceptance Testing, Regression Testing.
• Advanced collaboration skills to ensure design specifications are seamlessly implemented by the development team.
• Adept familiarity with version control.
• Adept in working independently, strategically, and navigating organizational ambiguity.
• Adept in data structures and algorithms, database management.
• Adept in cybersecurity, including encryption and authentication.
• Adept in cloud computing.
• Adept in coding software alerting & notifications.
• Adept in resolving code defects & developing enhancements.
• Adept in continuous delivery processes (including code peer review), distributed monitoring & logging, distributed tracing & analysis, operation response automation, and product telemetry.
• Adept in development techniques (e.g., OOO), DevOps engineering practices, and DevSecOps Lifecycle (Secure SDLC), and the Agile framework.
• Adept in full-stack development, mobile development, web development, site reliability engineering, technology-specific frameworks, and solution design.

Behavioral Skills

• Advanced in establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with employees at all levels within the organization, and with both internal and external customers.
• Advanced in interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with both technical and non-technical peers.
• Advanced in communicating effectively, both orally and in writing, to interact with team members, customers, management, and support personnel (technical and non-technical)
• Adept in identifying and analyzing risks and developing effective mitigation strategies.
• Adept in critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Adept in active listening, attention to detail, customer service, prioritization, and problem-solving skills.
• Adept in hands-on experience with related tools.
• Adept in working independently and strategically.
• Adept technical knowledge and diverse skillset to understand various technologies, systems, and potential risks.
• Adept in managing multiple projects simultaneously and prioritizing tasks based on urgency and impact.
• Adept at working under pressure and meeting deadlines individually and collaboratively. Thinks logically, assesses problems, and is results-oriented.
• Adept in identifying complex business and technology risks and associated vulnerabilities.

Competencies

Other Information

Pursuant to the New York State Public Officers Law & the MTA Code of Ethics, all employees who hold a policymaking position must file an Annual Statement of Financial Disclosure (FDS) with the NYS Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (the “Commission”).

Equal Employment Opportunity

MTA and its subsidiary and affiliated agencies are Equal Opportunity Employers, including with respect to veteran status and individuals with disabilities.

The MTA encourages qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and abilities, including military service members, to apply.