Staff Backend Engineer - Alarms
Company
Verkada
Date Posted
24-08-2025
Location
San Mateo, California, United States
Salary
$130,000 - $280,000
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 Staff 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
- Operate with autonomy and take ownership of systems from design through production
- Champion best practices in testing, observability, and continuous deployment
- 5+ 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
- Experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS
- Background working with databases (e.g. Postgres) and scalable data systems (e.g. Kafka, Redis)
- Track record of delivering robust, maintainable software in fast-paced teams
- Must be willing and able to work onsite five days per week
- Familiarity with Temporal or other workflow engines
- Interest in building AI-integrated, real-time systems
- Experience with Kubernetes, monitoring tools, and performance optimization
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
- 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
$130,000 - $280,000 USD
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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