Principal Software Engineer, Avigilon Access Control

Motorola Solutions; Vancouver; On-site; CAD 180,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Motorola Solutions seeks a Principal Software Development Engineer to drive the evolution of our high-scale access control platform. You will shape the multi-year technical vision, design cloud-native microservices, and ensure real-time, secure access decisions across a global footprint.

You will mentor teams, set architectural direction, and partner with product and security stakeholders to deliver resilient systems. The role requires 15+ years in software, deep C/C++, and cloud-edge experience.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of professional software development experience.
• 10+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience leading technical strategy and architecture for large teams.
• Deep expertise in C and C++ plus modern cloud languages (Go, Python, Node.js).
• Experience with cloud infra (AWS or GCP) and serverless architectures.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-year technical roadmap and architectural vision for enterprise-scale access control.
• Architect edge-to-cloud resilience connecting cloud-native services with edge devices.
• Lead architectural design reviews and mentor senior engineers.
• Prototype and architect emerging capabilities for edge computing and secure credentials.
• Collaborate across organizations to maintain engineering excellence and standards.

Skills

C/C++

Cloud & distributed

Edge computing

Go/Python/Node.js

AWS/GCP

Architectural strategy

Mentorship

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

Aurora MySQL

PostgreSQL

Redis

SQS/Kinesis

Job description

Company Overview

At Motorola Solutions, we believe that everything starts with our people. We’re a global close-knit community, united by the relentless pursuit to help keep people safer everywhere. We build and connect technologies to help protect people, property and places. Our solutions foster the collaboration that’s critical for safer communities, safer schools, safer hospitals, safer businesses, and ultimately, safer nations. Connect with a career that matters, and help us build a safer future.

Aperçu de l’entreprise Chez Motorola Solutions, nous pensons que tout commence par nos employés. Nous sommes une communauté mondiale soudée, unie par la volonté incessante de contribuer à la sécurité des personnes partout dans le monde. Nous concevons et connectons des technologies qui contribuent à protéger les personnes, les biens et les infrastructures. Nos solutions favorisent la collaboration essentielle pour améliorer la sécurité des populations, des écoles, des hôpitaux, des entreprises et, finalement, des nations. Connectez-vous à une carrière qui compte et aidez-nous à bâtir un avenir plus sûr.

Department Overview

Motorola Solutions Inc. (MSI) is seeking an experienced Principal Software Development Engineer to lead the evolution and optimization of our high-scale Access Control solution. This role will drive the multi-year technical vision and execution strategy for how our systems manage, synchronize, and authorize real-time security identities, permissions, and event telemetry across a global footprint. This role bridges high-performance cloud-native microservices and intelligent, resource‑constrained edge hardware. Our enterprise customers from emerging businesses to global, highly regulated enterprises depend on absolute reliability, security, and real-time responsiveness to protect their people, property, and physical spaces. Our access control solution processes millions of security events and device status updates daily, putting critical data and operational control directly into the hands of security operators around the world. The architectures you design will directly determine optimization of our cloud and on‑premises solutions, and how elegantly our systems maintain absolute resilience at the physical edge.

Job Description

Our edge‑to‑cloud security ecosystem operates in a hybrid model where sub‑second latency is non‑negotiable for real‑time entry decisions, yet absolute consistency and transactional safety are required for access logs, identity synchronization, and emergency lockdowns. As we evolve our systems to support enterprise‑scale multi‑tenancy, high‑volume device telemetry, and AI‑native edge capabilities, we require fundamentally new approaches to how we partition configurations, cache credentials, and orchestrate security states across the network. You will pioneer architectures where performance, security‑by‑design, and operational simplicity emerge naturally from sound, cohesive engineering rather than brute‑force scaling or ad‑hoc, matrixed integrations.

Key Job Responsibilities

• Define Technical Strategy and Vision: Own the multi‑year technical roadmap and architectural vision for enterprise scale physical access control solution, translating complex, ambiguous business initiatives into simple, scalable, and maintainable distributed systems.
• Architect Edge‑to‑Cloud Resilience: Design and optimize high‑performance, low‑latency architectures that securely connect cloud‑native microservices with physical edge devices, establishing absolute local system resilience and offline‑first capabilities.
• Drive Cross‑Team Collaboration and Mentorship: Serve as a technical force multiplier by leading high‑stakes architectural design reviews, building technical consensus across distributed engineering teams, and mentoring senior technical talent.
• Innovate with Next‑Generation Capabilities: Research, prototype, and architect emerging platform capabilities, including edge computing optimizations, secure distributed credential frameworks, and intelligent system interfaces to maintain a highly competitive technology stack.
• Cross‑Organizational Leadership and operational excellence: Build consensus across multiple engineering organizations with different priorities. Lead architectural reviews and provide critical, constructive feedback. Foster a culture of engineering excellence through code, designs, and technical standards.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of professional software development experience.
• 10+ years of designing, building, and operating highly available, large‑scale distributed systems.
• Experience leading technical strategy and architecture for engineering organizations of 50+ developers.
• Deep expertise in low‑level systems programming (C and C++) as well as modern, high‑concurrency cloud development languages (such as Go, Python, or Node.js).
• Deep expertise in cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and serverless architectures (e.g. ECS, Lambda, SQS, Kinesis, IoT Core) combined with database scaling (e.g. Aurora MySQL, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Redis).
• Proven track record of delivering high‑performance, secure software architectures that bridge physical edge devices or IoT hardware securely with cloud control planes.
• Experience writing architectural strategy narratives and presenting technical decisions to senior executive leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent technical discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct technical experience with Physical Access Control Systems, embedded device firmware, real‑time operating systems (RTOS), or video security integrations.
• Expertise in query optimization, execution planning, and distributed transaction databases.
• Proven success in taking a large, mature, legacy codebase and successfully decomposing it into clean, testable, and highly autonomous bounded contexts.
• Experience establishing and maintaining automated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines down to the physical hardware edge to replace manual deployment validation.
• A track record of mentoring senior engineering talent to Staff/Principal level.
• Recognized thought leadership, patents, or publications in distributed systems, IoT security, or edge computing.

Target Base Salary Range

Target Base Salary Range: 180,000 - 225,000 CAD Consistent with Motorola Solutions values and applicable law, we provide the following information to promote pay transparency and equity. Pay within this range varies and depends on job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience. The actual offer will be based on the individual candidate.

Basic Requirements

Bachelors Degree 10+ years of software development experience Travel Requirements None Relocation Provided None Position Type Experienced Referral Payment Plan No

EEO Statement

Motorola Solutions is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally‑protected characteristic.

We are proud of our people‑first and community‑focused culture, empowering every Motorolan to be their most authentic self and to do their best work to deliver on the promise of a safer world. If you’d like to join our team but feel that you don’t quite meet all of the preferred skills, we’d still love to hear why you think you’d be a great addition to our team. We’re committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruiting experience for candidates with disabilities, or other physical or mental health conditions. To request an accommodation, please complete this Reasonable Accommodations Form so we can assist you.

Motorola Solutions adopte, favorise et promeut les principes de diversité, d’équité et d’inclusion. Nous encourageons et accueillons les candidatures de toutes les personnes qualifiées, quelles que soient leur race, origines ethnique, religion ou croyance, orientation sexuelle, identité et expression sexuelle, statut d’anciens combattants ou tout autre statut protégé par la Loi. Nous sommes fiers de notre culture axée sur les personnes et les communautés, encourageant ainsi chaque Motorolan d’être la version la plus authentique de lui‑même dans ses responsabilités afin de tenir la promesse d’un monde plus sécuritaire. Si vous souhaitez vous joindre à notre communauté mais croyez que vous ne possédez pas toutes les exigences requises pour le poste convoité, nous aimerions tout de même connaître les raisons pour lesquelles vous pensez être un excellent candidat pour notre équipe. Nous offrons également des mesures d’adaptation pendant toutes les étapes du processus d’embauche afin de favoriser l’inclusion des personnes vivant avec un handicap physique et/ou mental. Pour demander un aménagement, veuillez remplir ce formulaire d’aménagement raisonnable afin que nous puissions vous aider.