Backend Engineer, Alarms

Verkada; Foster City (CA); On-site; USD 125,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare benefits

HSA/FSA programs

Mental health support

Parental leave

Paid holidays

Professional development stipend

Fertility stipend

Wellness/fitness benefits

Healthy lunches provided

Commuter benefits

Job summary

Verkada is seeking a Backend Engineer for its Alarms team to design and scale AI-driven detection and response workflows. You will work on low-latency services that support real-time alarm enforcement, notifications, video verification, and dispatch across hardware and cloud platforms.

You will join a small, high-impact team collaborating with product, design, frontend, and firmware to deliver robust security experiences. 1–3 years of backend experience and strong Go skills are preferred.

Qualifications

• 1-3 years of backend engineering experience in production.
• Strong programming skills in Go.
• Solid grasp of distributed system design, API architecture, and event-driven workflows.
• Experience with databases (Postgres) and scalable data systems (Kafka, Redis).

Responsibilities

• Design and build low-latency backend services that orchestrate alarm detection and response.
• Create flexible and extensible AI-powered workflows for intrusion and video monitoring use cases.
• Build distributed systems that integrate internal products and third-party services (notifications, transcription, dispatch).
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, frontend, and firmware engineers to shape end-to-end customer experiences.

Skills

Backend engineering

Go

Distributed systems

API design

PostgreSQL

Kafka

Redis

Tools

Temporal

Job description

Who We Are

Verkada is transforming how organizations protect their people and places with an integrated, privacy-sensitive AI-powered platform that includes solutions for video security, access control, air quality sensors, alarms, intercoms, and visitor management.

We've got serious momentum in the market: more than 30,000 customers (including 100+ of the Fortune 500), a $5.8B valuation, more than $1 billion in annualized bookings, and backing from CapitalG, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Felicis Ventures, Next47 and more. Physical AI is one of the most consequential technology shifts of our time, and Verkada is at the center of it.

You can look at all kinds of communities to see our platform's impact in the world. It's the retailer that uses our agentic AI to deter theft before it happens. The warehouse that uses AI-powered alerts to make sure its team is protected on the floor with proper PPE. The school that's alerted to a threat in real-time and triggers a lockdown in seconds, not minutes. We're rapidly scaling this impact: today, more than 2 million Verkada devices are deployed across 170+ countries.

About the Alarms Team:

The Alarms team builds systems that detect, verify, and respond to real-world security threats using sensors, cameras, and AI. You'll work on products that are critical during high-stakes moments and directly impact customer safety.

We operate as a small, fast-moving team with significant ownership, collaborating across mobile, backend, and firmware.

About the Role

Verkada's Alarms team builds the intelligent systems that detect, verify, and respond to real-world security threats-whether it's a break-in or suspicious activity caught on video. We combine intrusion sensors, cameras, and AI to create a fast, reliable, and modern security experience.

As a Backend Engineer, you'll play a key role in designing and scaling our AI-driven detection and response workflows. These systems power automated threat identification, customer notifications, video verification, and emergency dispatch-all in real time. You'll be joining a small, high-impact team working across Verkada's hardware and cloud platforms to keep people and property safe.

What You'll Do

• Design and build low-latency, high-availability backend services that orchestrate alarm detection and response
• Create flexible and extensible AI-powered workflows for intrusion and video monitoring use cases
• Build distributed systems that integrate internal products and third-party services (e.g., notifications, transcription, dispatch)
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, frontend, and firmware engineers to shape end-to-end customer experiences

What You Bring

• 1-3 years of backend engineering experience in a production environment
• Strong programming skills-Go preferred
• Solid grasp of distributed system design, API architecture, and event-driven workflows
• Background working with databases (e.g. Postgres) and scalable data systems (e.g. Kafka, Redis)

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with Temporal or other workflow engines
• Experience developing AI-based systems capable of real-time reasoning from video and audio inputs.

US Employee Benefits

Verkada is committed to fostering a workplace environment that prioritizes the holistic health and wellbeing of our employees and their families by offering comprehensive wellness perks, benefits, and resources. Our benefits and perks programs include, but are not limited to:

• Healthcare programs that can be tailored to meet the personal health and financial well-being needs - Premiums are 100% covered for the employee under at least one plan and 80% for family premiums under all plans
• Nationwide medical, vision and dental coverage
• Health Saving Account (HSA) with annual employer contributions and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) with tax saving options
• Expanded mental health support
• Paid parental leave policy & fertility benefits
• Time off to relax and recharge through our paid holidays, firmwide extended holidays, flexible PTO and personal sick time
• Professional development stipend
• Fertility Stipend
• Wellness/fitness benefits
• Healthy lunches provided daily
• Commuter benefits

Additional Information

• We do sponsor and take over sponsorship of employment visas for this role. If we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa.

Annual Pay Range

At Verkada, we want to attract and retain the best employees, and compensate them in a way that appropriately and fairly values their individual contribution to the company. With that in mind, we carefully consider a number of factors to determine the appropriate starting pay for an employee, including their primary work location and an assessment of a candidate's skills and experience, as well as market demands and internal parity. A Verkada employee may be eligible for additional forms of compensation, depending on their role, including sales incentives, discretionary bonuses, and/or equity in the company in the form of restricted stock units (RSUs)

Below is the annual on-target earnings (OTE) range for full-time employees for this position, comprised of base compensation and commissions (if applicable).

Estimated Annual Pay Range

$125,000 — $160,000 USD

Verkada Is An Equal Opportunity Employer

As an equal opportunity employer, Verkada is committed to providing employment opportunities to all individuals. All applicants for positions at Verkada will be treated without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

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