Senior Backend Engineer - Virtual Guard

Senior Backend Engineer - Virtual Guard

San Mateo, CA United States

Who We Are

Verkada is transforming how organizations protect their people and places with an integrated, privacy-sensitive AI-powered platform that includes solutions for video security, access control, air quality sensors, alarms, intercoms, and visitor management.

We've got serious momentum in the market: more than 30,000 customers (including 100+ of the Fortune 500), a $5.8B valuation, more than $1 billion in annualized bookings, and backing from CapitalG, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Felicis Ventures, Next47 and more. Physical AI is one of the most consequential technology shifts of our time, and Verkada is at the center of it.

You can look at all kinds of communities to see our platform's impact in the world. It's the retailer that uses our agentic AI to deter theft before it happens. The warehouse that uses AI-powered alerts to make sure its team is protected on the floor with proper PPE. The school that's alerted to a threat in real-time and triggers a lockdown in seconds, not minutes. We're rapidly scaling this impact: today, more than 2 million Verkada devices are deployed across 170+ countries.

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

Culture and Values

• Self-motivated problem solver: At Verkada, you will tackle large, complex problems with no clear answers.
• Teach and learn: You will learn new technologies while being entrusted with the technical ownership of major systems, and we hope to learn something from you in turn.
• Growth mindset: As a small, fast-growing startup, every day brings new challenges and opportunities for growth, and we want you to grow with us!

US Employee 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, 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

Additional Information

• 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

Verkada Is An 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.

Your application will be handled in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Policy.