Senior Staff Software Engineer, Recognition Platform

Los Angeles, CA · full time · Senior

$232,000 – $268,000

Listed on Metropolis Technologies’s own careers site. You apply with them directly — we never stand between you and the employer.

What this role is

Metropolis Technologies updated this posting after we read it, so our summary may be out of date. Check their posting for the latest.

This role owns the technical architecture of Metropolis's recognition platform, directing the evolution of high-volume edge-to-cloud pipelines that process sensor data into real-time decisions across parking, retail, and hospitality. You'll lead without direct reports, aligning distributed teams on shared architecture and raising technical standards while handling the unique constraints of physical-world deployment and biometric systems.

Our summary, not Metropolis Technologies’s wording. The full posting is on their site.

Skills this role names

What they ask for

Required

12+ years building and operating distributed, data-intensive production systems
Deep experience as a multi-service platform technical owner
Cross-functional technical leadership and alignment of independent engineering teams
Expert proficiency in JVM languages (Java or Scala)
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 understanding of delivery semantics, idempotency, ordering, backpressure, and tail latency
Experience building rules, eligibility, or decisioning systems with deterministic and probabilistic signals
Strong systems judgment integrating third-party APIs, SDKs, and vendor constraints
Excellent written technical communication and RFC writing
Comfortable with physical-world deployment constraints and operational messiness
Deep understanding of observability, automated testing, and progressive delivery

Nice to have

Experience with computer vision, biometric matching, or sensor-fusion systems
Background in privacy- or biometric-regulated domains (BIPA, CCPA, GDPR) or consent-management systems
Experience with IoT, edge computing, fleet-scale device telemetry, or MQTT-class transports
Expertise in identity resolution or customer data platforms
Experience with hospitality, retail, or physical-operations software
Prior experience in principal-adjacent or tech-lead-of-tech-leads scope