Product Engineer

Location: Tysons, VA (Hybrid, 2-3 days onsite per week, typically Tuesday‑Thursday). Start date: ASAP. Duration: 6‑month contract‑to‑hire. Compensation: $71‑$82/hr W2. Benefits: eligible for Health, Dental, Vision, 401K. Must be authorized to work in the U.S.; not eligible for sponsorship.

About the role

Our client is seeking a Product Software Engineer to help design and build the foundational architecture of a next-generation physical security platform. This is a 100% greenfield, backend-focused product engineering role where you will build services, integrations, identity and authorization capabilities, and real-time messaging infrastructure from the ground up. The ideal candidate is a builder who thrives in a small team, enjoys solving ambiguous technical problems, and has hands-on experience developing production backend software, cloud-based pub/sub or IoT systems, and secure authentication and authorization solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend APIs and microservices supporting user and device identity, token validation, and authorization.
• Develop enterprise authorization capabilities using RBAC, ABAC, and related access-control models.
• Architect and secure serverless publish/subscribe messaging infrastructure across modern cloud environments.
• Build IoT and edge-ingestion capabilities using MQTT and secure machine-to-machine communication.
• Design data pipelines that ingest streaming telemetry and reliably persist data within cloud-based data stores.
• Build integrations with access-control, video, alarm, sensor, and other physical security platforms using vendor APIs, SDKs, and event streams.
• Implement authentication and authorization using technologies such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, and SAML.
• Design secure logging, auditing, monitoring, and threat-detection capabilities for edge and cloud access requests.
• Build proof-of-concepts and prototypes to evaluate new technologies and architectural approaches.
• Help design scalable systems from the ground up rather than maintaining an established architecture.
• Evaluate technical approaches and clearly communicate tradeoffs and recommendations.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Security, Operations, and Engineering stakeholders.
• Take ownership of technical decisions and remain accountable for outcomes.
• Translate complex technical concepts for both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Experiment with new technologies and help determine how they can be incorporated into the evolving product platform.

Requirements

• 3‑5+ years of professional product software engineering experience with a strong focus on backend development.
• Professional experience developing production software in Go, C#/.NET, and/or Python, with Go and .NET particularly valuable.
• Experience building backend APIs, microservices, or distributed systems in a commercial product environment.
• Hands‑on experience with cloud infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and/or GCP, ideally with strong experience in at least two major cloud platforms.
• Experience with MQTT, publish/subscribe messaging patterns, broker integrations, IoT, or comparable distributed messaging technologies.
• Experience building serverless messaging solutions using technologies such as AWS IoT Core, SNS, SQS; Azure IoT Hub, Service Bus, Event Hubs; or Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
• Hands‑on authentication and authorization experience.
• Strong understanding of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, and related identity protocols.
• Experience with role‑based and/or attribute‑based access control.
• Experience with containers and modern cloud‑native development.
• Understanding of PKI, TLS, X.509 certificates, and secure software‑development practices.
• Experience building proof‑of‑concepts, prototypes, or new systems from the ground up.
• Experience taking a product, feature, or technical capability from initial concept through production launch.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.