Senior Software Engineer, Backend IoT & Video Platform

Department: Hub and Edge

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Reporting To: Namrata Garach

Description

About The Team: The SmartThings Video & IoT Platform team powers the next generation of smart home experiences by integrating directly connected Audio/Video devices at massive scale. As Samsung SmartThings adopts the latest industry standards our team builds low-latency, dynamic cloud platforms supporting 1st-party and 3rd-party cameras. We primarily build event-driven distributed systems using JVM technologies (Kotlin, Scala), Python, and modern cloud-native AWS architectures.

About The Role: We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer with deep expertise in cloud architectures, real-time media streaming, and distributed systems. In this role, you will lead the design and implementation of cloud services connecting first-party and Matter-enabled cameras to the SmartThings platform. You will architect high-availability services using AWS (EC2, EKS/Kubernetes, Lambda, S3, ElastiCache, DynamoDB, EventBridge) and collaborate closely with firmware, matter, mobile, security and product engineering teams.

This role is hybrid, 3 days/week in our Minneapolis Office (on iconic St Anthony Main across from Downtown...with paid attached parking!).

The pay range for this role is $117,000 to $158,000, with an annual bonus target of 20%.

Key Responsibilities

In this role, your primary responsibilities will include the following:

• Architect & Build: Lead the backend design and implementation for Direct-to-Cloud and Edge/Matter camera integration within SmartThings.
• Scale & Performance: Build high-throughput, low-latency APIs and event-driven microservices to handle live AV streaming, clip recording, and video device management.
• Technical Leadership: Drive architectural discussions, system design reviews, and establish engineering best practices. Mentor other engineers on the team.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with firmware, mobile, matter, security, and product management teams to deliver seamless end-to-end device onboarding and streaming experiences.
• Operational Excellence: Participate in system observability setup (tracing, metrics, alerting) and join the team's on-call rotation to ensure high availability and reliability for consumer-facing production systems.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

What You Bring On Day One (Required Qualifications)

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Comuputer Engineering or related
• 5+ years of production experience in backend software engineering, with demonstrated experience as a Senior technical contributor.
• High proficiency in JVM languages (Kotlin or Scala) as well as Python.
• Strong hands-on experience building distributed systems on AWS (EC2, K8s, Lambda, DynamoDB, ElastiCache).
• Experience with real-time video/audio streaming protocols (WebRTC) or event-driven streaming frameworks (Kafka, Kinesis, EventBridge).
• Proven track record of designing, scaling, and maintaining production REST/gRPC APIs and microservices.
• Strong system design capability, excellent communication skills, and a history of cross-functional technical collaboration.
• A passion for automating everything-from infrastructure (Terraform/CDK) to testing and deployment pipelines.

Desired Skills

• Experience with IoT protocols (Matter, Thread, MQTT, mTLS/PKI security frameworks).
• Deep experience in observability tools (Datadog, Sumo Logic, OpenTelemetry).
• Experience handling high-concurrency, low-latency media streams at scale.

SmartThings Benefits

• We offer an attractive compensation package with comprehensive health benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and mental health; an HSA with employer contribution; life & disability insurance; FSAs for health and dependent care expenses; a competitive 401k with a 5% employer match, and more.
• All of our employees enjoy unlimited PTO, 12 paid holidays, and a generous parental leave policy (8 weeks fully paid parental leave and 8 more fully paid weeks for childbirth recovery leave).
• Eligible employees benefit from our education reimbursement program, and all employees enjoy access to learning resources through O'Reilly.
• Our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging is embedded into our culture and our work, and everyone has frequent opportunities to join forums and groups and participate in ongoing projects.
• We offer a parking stipend to cover the monthly garage cost. EV chargers are also onsite.
• In-office catered lunches on Thursdays.
• Access to the onsite gym.

Base compensation range for this position is $117,000 to $158,000. Actual base within this range will depend on many factors including experience, skills, technical expertise and market alignment. In addition, this role is eligible for a 20% annual target bonus based heavily on individual performance.