Principal Software Architect Signals

Job Description

Job Description

Salary: $190,000 $240,000 DOE

About Knightscope

Knightscope is a security technology company building the Nations First Autonomous Security Force. The Company combines autonomous machines, advanced software, and human expertise to help protect people, property, and critical infrastructure. Knightscopes long-term mission is to make the United States of America the safest country in the world..

About the Role

Knightscope is seeking a Principal/Staff Engineering Lead to own the architecture and delivery of the Signals intelligence platform a real-time, multi-tenant web application integrating live robot telemetry, AI-driven alert management, 3D digital twin visualization, and multi-stream video into a single operational platform. This is the highest-leverage technical role on the Signals team. You will serve as the single architectural authority across 215 platform requirements, own all cross-team integration sequencing, and set the technical direction that nine engineers execute against. This is a player-coach role: you will make binding architecture decisions, lead design reviews, and remain hands-on with critical implementation, code reviews, and root-cause analysis while representing technical decisions to executive leadership and enterprise customers.

Location Requirement: Full-time, on-site at Sunnyvale HQ (No relocation provided)

Key Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the Signals platform architecture: define system design, API contracts, data models, and integration patterns across Full Stack, AI/ML, Audio/Video, and DevOps workstreams.
• Drive the platform release gate: establish and enforce a zero-defect standard across all 215 platform requirements, sequencing integration dependencies to keep all nine engineers unblocked.
• Translate business requirements and customer commitments into a concrete technical roadmap; maintain a prioritized architecture backlog and communicate trade-offs clearly to engineering leadership and the CEO.
• Lead architecture and design reviews; establish engineering standards, coding patterns, and reusable reference architectures that reduce delivery friction across the team.
• Partner with the ICM Architect to define shared services, cross-platform API contracts, and integration sequencing between Signals and ICM.
• Serve as the primary technical interface with RTX and enterprise customers fielding architectural questions, providing scalability assurances, and representing the platform roadmap.
• Mentor senior engineers; conduct regular 1:1 technical coaching, code reviews, and root-cause analysis to elevate the team and maintain engineering quality.
• Own architectural risk identification and mitigation; translate technical risks into business impact language for the executive team.

Required Qualifications

• 1015 years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years in a Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or Architect role owning platform-level architecture across multiple product teams.
• Proven track record delivering complex, multi-team SaaS platforms with hard launch gates and enterprise customer commitments ideally in security operations, physical security, or mission-critical operations software.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems architecture: microservices, event-driven design, real-time data pipelines, API gateway patterns, and multi-tenant data isolation.
• Strong proficiency in cloud-native architecture on AWS (or equivalent): Lambda, ECS/EKS, RDS, Kinesis, S3, CloudFront, IAM and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CDK, or equivalent).
• Experience designing systems that integrate real-time sensor/telemetry data, AI/ML inference services, and 3D visualization layers is a strong differentiator.
• Demonstrated ability to own cross-functional technical dependencies at scale driving alignment across engineering, product, and external partners without direct authority.
• Excellent communication skills: can articulate architectural trade-offs to both engineers and executive leadership, and write clear, decision-quality design documents.
• Familiarity with enterprise security standards (SOC 2, WCAG AA, RBAC/ABAC, encryption at rest and in transit) and compliance-aware architecture.
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field or equivalent professional experience.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $190,000 $240,000 (DOE)
• Equity: Stock options
• Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 401(k), paid time off
• Location Requirement: Full-time, on-site at Sunnyvale HQ