Senior Staff Software Engineer, Recognition Platform

metropolis; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Metropolis, a leader in Recognition Platform technology, seeks a Senior Staff Software Engineer to own the MR P architecture across edge ingestion, identity resolution, decisioning, and real-time actions. You will drive RFCs, set technical direction, and align cross-functional teams and external partners.

You will design high-volume edge-to-cloud pipelines, balance deterministic and probabilistic signals, and ensure production quality with SLOs, testing, and rollout strategies.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience building and operating distributed, data-intensive production systems.
• Cross-functional technical leadership and alignment of independent teams on architecture.
• Expert proficiency in Java or Scala with event-driven and service-oriented design using gRPC/protobuf.
• Design of high-throughput ingestion pipelines with tail latency, backpressure, and ordering.
• Experience building rules or decisioning systems combining deterministic and probabilistic signals.
• Strong API integration skills and experience with third-party services.
• Excellent written technical communication and RFC drafting.
• Comfort operating in hardware-influenced environments and regulated contexts.
• Familiarity with observability, automated testing, progressive delivery, and AI-assisted tooling.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end architecture across edge ingestion, identity resolution, decisioning, notification, and operator surfaces, driving RFCs and roadmaps.
• Drive cross-functional alignment across application, CV/ML, data, security, and platform teams and external partners.
• Evolve high-volume edge-to-cloud streaming pipelines with tail latency considerations and backpressure handling.
• Design rules and decisioning layers for real-time actions including thresholds and next-best-action logic.
• Balance deterministic logic with probabilistic signals and establish replay harnesses for model testing.
• Architect privacy, identity, and consent models in regulated environments in collaboration with Legal and Security.
• Own production quality through SLOs, alerting, runbooks, soak testing, and progressive rollout via feature flags.
• Elevate technical standards via design/code reviews, mentorship, and AI-native engineering workflows.

Skills

Java/Scala

Event-driven design

Service-oriented design

gRPC/Protobuf

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Observability

RFCs

Job description

Who we are

The real world is the next frontier, and at Metropolis, we are creating the artificial intelligence to make it responsive. We are pioneering the Recognition Economy - a future where mundane repetition disappears and being known unlocks access, comfort, and belonging everywhere you go. From transforming parking into a seamless drive-in, drive-out experience for millions of Members to expanding our intelligence layer across retail and hospitality, we are building a world that feels instinctive and magical. The future isn't coming; it's here, and we need builders, innovators, and problem solvers to help us create it.

Who you are

Metropolis is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer, Recognition Platform to serve as the technical owner of the Metropolis Recognition Platform (MRP). You are the engineer other engineers route their hardest architectural questions to, holding the entire platform architecture in your head and navigating cross-functional boundaries across application engineering, computer vision, data, security, and platform teams as well as external partners. In this role, you will lead the evolution of high-volume edge-to-cloud pipelines and decisioning systems that transform physical-world sensor signals into real-time actions, setting technical direction, establishing architectural RFCs, and driving cross-functional alignment without needing formal reporting authority.

What you'll do

• Lead end-to-end architecture across edge ingestion, identity resolution, decisioning, notification, and operator surfaces while driving spec-driven development through RFCs and managing roadmap sequencing


• Drive cross-functional alignment and resolve ownership ambiguities across application, CV/ML, data, security, and platform engineering teams as well as external partner integrations


• Evolve high-volume edge-to-cloud streaming pipelines on a horizontally scalable backbone, engineering for tail latency, intermittent connectivity, backpressure, and out-of-order events


• Design rules and decisioning layers for real-time actions including watchlist alerting, arrival routing, eligibility, consent gating, frequency capping, and next-best-action logic


• Balance deterministic logic with probabilistic signals by establishing explicit thresholds, quantitative cost reasoning for recognition errors, and replay harnesses for model testing


• Architect privacy, identity, and consent models designed for biometric-regulated environments with bounded-time opt-out propagation in close collaboration with Legal and Security


• Own production quality by defining SLOs, actionable alerting, runbooks, soak testing, and progressive rollout via feature flags


• Elevate technical standards through design reviews, code reviews, mentorship, and AI-native engineering workflows

What we're looking for

• 12+ years of experience building and operating distributed, data-intensive production systems, including deep experience as a multi-service platform technical owner


• Proven track record of cross-functional technical leadership and aligning independent engineering teams on shared architecture


• Expert proficiency in a JVM language such as Java or Scala, alongside 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 deep understanding of delivery semantics, idempotency, ordering, backpressure, and tail latency


• Experience building rules, eligibility, or decisioning systems where deterministic logic coexists with probabilistic or model-driven signals


• Strong systems judgment integrating third-party APIs, SDKs, and vendor constraints


• Excellent written technical communication skills with a track record of writing decisive RFCs


• Comfortable navigating physical-world deployment constraints, hardware conditions, and operational messiness beyond staging environments


• Deep understanding of observability, automated testing, progressive delivery, and fluency with AI-assisted engineering tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot in daily workflows

While not required, these are a plus

• Experience with computer vision, biometric matching, or sensor-fusion systems, specifically reasoning about confidence, thresholds, and drift


• Background operating in privacy- or biometric-regulated domains such as BIPA, CCPA, or GDPR, or working with consent-management systems


• Experience with IoT, edge computing, fleet-scale device telemetry, or MQTT-class transports


• Expertise in identity resolution or customer data platforms, stitching multi-system signals into durable profiles


• Experience with hospitality, retail, or physical-operations software, including hospitality CRM and PMS integrations


• Prior experience in a Uber-tech-lead, TL-of-TLs, or principal-adjacent scope

Our Stack

• Languages + Frameworks: TypeScript, React, Scala (principally), Java (limited)


• Datastores: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Snowflake


• Cloud: AWS


• Version control: Git &