Senior Backend Engineer - Virtual Guard

Tensec; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare programs

Nationwide medical, vision, and dental coverage

Health Saving Account (HSA)

Expanded mental health support

Paid parental leave policy

Flexible PTO

Professional development stipend

Wellness/fitness benefits

Healthy lunches provided daily

Commuter benefits

Job summary

Verkada, located in San Mateo, CA, is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to design and build distributed backend systems for AI-driven physical security products. The role involves working with multimodal data across the cloud and edge environments and ensuring systems operate reliably at scale. Candidates should have over 5 years of backend engineering experience and a strong ownership mindset. The position offers a competitive salary, benefits including healthcare, parental leave, and wellness perks.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating production systems at scale.
• Strong experience designing distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and scalable APIs.
• Proven track record of building large-scale, data-intensive or AI-powered systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and build distributed backend systems that power AI-driven detection and monitoring workflows.
• Develop scalable pipelines for processing large volumes of video, audio, and sensor data.
• Architect event-driven systems that trigger automated actions such as alerts and verification.

Skills

Backend engineering experience

Designing distributed systems

Event-driven architectures

Scalable APIs

Real-time data pipelines

Programming skills in Go or Python

Databases and streaming systems

Job description

About the Role

You will build and scale the backend systems powering a new generation of AI-driven physical security products. This includes designing the infrastructure and workflows that enable automated intrusion detection, real-time decisioning, and intelligent response systems across cameras, sensors, and audio streams. Your systems directly protect schools, hospitals, and businesses.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will own the architecture behind large-scale, low-latency systems that ingest, process, and act on multimodal data across Verkada's cloud backend and global fleet of cameras and sensors. These systems power automated threat detection, video and audio analysis, alerting, and downstream actions such as verification and dispatch. Unlike pure cloud AI companies, the edge is a core part of the system here. Your services coordinate directly with devices in the field, not just cloud pipelines after ingestion. You will work in a fast-moving environment, turning ideas into production-ready systems that operate reliably at scale.

What You'll Do

• Design and build distributed backend systems that power AI-driven detection, monitoring, and response workflows
• Develop scalable pipelines for ingesting and processing large volumes of video, audio, and sensor data in real time
• Architect event-driven systems that trigger automated actions such as alerts, verification, and escalation
• Build infrastructure that enables integration and deployment of large video and audio models into production systems
• Rapidly prototype and iterate on new AI-powered capabilities, moving from concept to deployed features
• Optimize systems for low latency, high availability, and reliability across cloud and edge environments
• Collaborate cross-functionally to define and deliver end-to-end intelligent safety and automation systems
• Establish best practices for observability, testing, and continuous deployment in AI-integrated backend services

What You Will Bring

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating production systems at scale
• Strong experience designing distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and scalable APIs
• Proven track record of building large-scale, data-intensive or AI-powered systems
• Experience working with real-time data pipelines and high-throughput systems
• Familiarity with deploying or integrating machine learning models, especially in video, audio, or multimodal domains
• Strong programming skills (e.g., Go, Python) and experience with modern cloud infrastructure
• Experience with databases and streaming systems (e.g., Kafka, Temporal, Postgres)
• Ability to quickly prototype, experiment, and iterate in ambiguous problem spaces
• Strong ownership mindset with experience delivering reliable, production-grade systems end-to-end

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:

• 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 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

Annual Pay Range

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: $130,000 – $280,000 USD.

Additional Information

• We sponsor and handle employment visa sponsorship for this role. If we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to obtain a visa.

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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