Staff Software Engineer

Alarm.com•Tysons, VA

8d•Hybrid

About The Position

Staff engineers optimize for the platform that must keep delivering across hundreds of services two years from now — and they know the difference between a library that's elegant on paper and one that holds up when every feature team in the company depends on it. We're in the middle of a significant architectural evolution at Alarm.com — decomposing a large monolith into well-bounded, separately deployable services — and the SDA Platform team is the team that makes that possible. We own the proxy API layer that exposes monolith functionality today, the shared libraries every SDA is built on, and the developer tooling that shapes how engineering teams across ADC build software. We need someone who has done platform work like this before: who understands how shared infrastructure accrues complexity, how to set standards that teams actually adopt, and how to bring engineers along without breaking what's already in production. This is a hands-on role. You'll write code, lead design sessions, and stay close to production. The difference is that your decisions ripple outward — they shape how the whole organization builds.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related field, or equivalent work experience
8+ years of professional software engineering experience
Strong experience with C# and .NET Core; experience with distributed systems and microservices architecture
Demonstrated ability to lead technical work on a team — setting direction, unblocking others, and holding a high bar for quality
Experience designing and building shared platform libraries or internal developer tooling used by other engineering teams
Experience with event streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka) and background service patterns
Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts: caching (Redis), high availability, service decomposition
Strong architectural instincts — you can evaluate a design, identify coupling risks, and guide teams toward better domain boundaries
Experience with Kubernetes-based deployments and modern observability tooling (Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or equivalent)
Excellent communication skills — you can write clear design documents, run productive code reviews, and explain complex tradeoffs to both engineers and stakeholders

Nice To Haves

Experience with contract testing (e.g., Specmatic, Pact) and progressive delivery patterns (e.g., Argo Rollouts, canary deployments)
Familiarity with internal developer portals (e.g., Backstage) and developer experience programs
Experience with legacy API modernization or monolith decomposition at scale
Experience with Helm chart development and Kubernetes-native infrastructure tooling

Responsibilities

Contribute to the technical direction of the SDA Platform team, helping guide the proxy API suite and key SDAs (Customer Login, Profile, Weather) — ensuring these services are built to a high standard and are operationally excellent.
Help maintain and evolve the shared SDA library suite (Alarm.Kafka, Alarm.AspNetCore., Alarm.BackgroundService, Alarm.Caching.Redis, Alarm.CronJobs, and more) that serves as the foundational infrastructure for all SDA development at ADC.
Drive architectural analysis and design for core platform domains. Help ADC untangle historically coupled concepts — Customer Accounts, Customer Logins, Profiles — into properly bounded, maintainable service boundaries.
Improve and maintain the SDA developer experience through dotnet-templates, Backstage integration, Specmatic contract testing, and progressive delivery tooling with Helm and Argo Rollouts.
Participate in architecture reviews, provide technical guidance to other engineering teams building on SDA infrastructure, and advocate for platform best practices across the organization.
Ensure the operational health of platform services through Grafana dashboards, alert validation, load testing support, and a strong culture of operational readiness.
Actively mentor engineers on the team, leading synchronous code reviews, raising technical bar, and helping junior and mid-level engineers grow their skills in platform engineering, domain design, and distributed systems.
Model effective use of AI tools across the team — identifying where they provide real leverage and helping the team build good instincts for when and how to apply them.
Shape platform direction, not just execute on specs.
Other duties as assigned.