Senior Software Engineer, Product Foundations

Senior Software Engineer, Product Foundations

Metropolis is an artificial intelligence company that uses computer vision technology to enable frictionless, checkout-free experiences in the real world. Today, we are reimagining parking to enable millions of consumers to just "drive in and drive out." We envision a future where people transact in the real world with a speed, ease and convenience that is unparalleled, even online. Tomorrow, we will power checkout-free experiences anywhere you go to make the everyday experiences of living, working and playing remarkable - giving us back our most valuable asset, time.

This is your opportunity to solve complex distributed systems challenges at scale while building the technical foundation that will enable Metropolis to expand our existing business into new markets and support our new verticals from the ground up. You'll be working on the kind of deep systems problems that require exceptional analytical skills, systems thinking, and a passion for efficiency, scalability, and operational excellence.

Our team tackles the most complex technical challenges in the organization - from designing robust service mesh architectures to building foundational services like identity management and message processing to creating developer tooling that enables hundreds of engineers to move fast while maintaining reliability. You'll work alongside highly technical HyperNerds who live and breathe distributed systems, performance optimization, developer productivity, and reliability engineering – you'll collaborate with most of our technical teams including Application Development, Infrastructure, and our Advanced Technologies group.

If you're energized by building the technical backbone that enables entire businesses to scale, solving hard distributed systems problems, and architecting platforms that will power the future of AI in the real world, this role is for you. We operate in a fast-paced, challenging, and fun environment where technical excellence is paramount.

What You'll Do

• MTWS Foundation: Design and build the core services of Metropolis Web Services - the composable platform that will power multiple mobility businesses including IAM, notifications, message processing, and other critical infrastructure components
• Service Mesh Architecture: Build and maintain our service mesh infrastructure, enabling secure, reliable, and observable communication between hundreds of microservices at scale
• Developer Experience & Platform: Create sophisticated developer tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and platform automation that enables product teams to ship code safely and efficiently while maintaining high operational standards
• System Architecture: Make critical technical decisions about service boundaries, API design, data consistency patterns, and system reliability that affect the entire platform and multiple business lines
• Performance & Scalability: Architect and optimize systems for high throughput and low latency to support millions of transactions across our global platform as we scale to new markets
• Operational Excellence: Establish monitoring, alerting, and reliability practices that ensure 99.99% uptime for mission-critical mobility infrastructure
• Technical Leadership: Drive architectural discussions, establish engineering best practices, and mentor other engineers while contributing directly to complex technical implementations

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of backend software engineering experience with deep focus on distributed systems and platform infrastructure
• Expert-level Java proficiency with deep understanding of JVM performance, concurrency, and ecosystem tooling. Scala experience is a big plus
• Production experience with microservices architecture, container orchestration (Kubernetes), and cloud platforms (AWS)
• Strong systems thinking with proven ability to design and implement large-scale, high-availability distributed systems that handle significant load
• Observability expertise including hands-on production experience with metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting systems in high-load environments
• Database and data systems knowledge including relational databases, event streaming (Kafka, SQS), caching strategies, and data consistency patterns
• Experience with AI-powered development tools such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar agentic coding tools for enhanced productivity – context engineering in particular
• Excellent technical communication with ability to design and document complex systems, lead technical discussions, and collaborate across multiple teams
• Local to New York City, Seattle, or Los Angeles area

While Not Required, These Are A Plus:

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field
• Security and compliance expertise particularly in authentication, authorization, secrets management, and regulatory compliance for financial transactions
• Experience with high-growth environments where you've scaled systems through rapid expansion and increasing load
• Open source contributions or technical blog writing that demonstrates depth of technical expertise in distributed systems
• Performance optimization experience with profiling, benchmarking, and system tuning at hyperscale

Our Stack

• Languages + Frameworks: TypeScript, React, Scala (principally), Java (limited)
• Datastores: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Snowflake
• Cloud: AWS
• Version control: Git & GitHub
• AI Tooling: Copilot on GitHub
• Observability: Datadog

When you join Metropolis, you'll join a team of world-class product leaders and engineers, building an ecosystem of technologies at the intersection of parking, mobility, and real estate. Our goal is to build an inclusive culture where everyone has a voice and the best idea wins. You will play a key role in building and maintaining this culture as our organization grows. The anticipated base salary for this position is $180,000.00 USD to $260,000.00 USD annually. The actual base salary offered is determined by a number of variables, including, as appropriate, the applicant's qualifications for the position, years of relevant experience, distinctive skills, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and the location of residence and/or place of employment. Base salary is one component of Metropolis's total compensation package, which may also include access to or eligibility for healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan, short-term and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, a lucrative stock option plan, bonus plans and more.