Principal Automation Engineer Jobs in Reston, VA

Principal Software Engineer — emPower

Do you love working with connected devices, automation, and real-world systems? Have you automated your own home, built integrations across smart devices, or thought deeply about how cloud software should control physical systems reliably?

Alarm.com is looking for a versatile Principal Software Engineer to help lead architecture and engineering for our emPower team, which builds software for IoT, smart home automation, energy management, HVAC, water, and connected-device control experiences. This role is an IC role that sits at the intersection of cloud services, physical devices, mobile and web applications, automation logic, data processing, and customer-facing product experiences.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will provide hands-on technical leadership across teams. You will help define architecture, guide major design decisions, mentor engineers, and lead the evolution of systems that must be reliable, scalable, maintainable, and adaptable as our connected-device platform continues to grow.

Alarm.com combines the product breadth and technical scale of a mature connected-device platform with the collaborative culture of a smaller engineering organization. This role is ideal for someone who wants to work across software, hardware, data, and product domains while helping shape systems used by millions of customers.

What You'll Do

As a Principal Software Engineer on the emPower team, you will help design and evolve systems that coordinate physical devices, cloud services, mobile and web applications, automation engines, partner integrations, and data pipelines. You will work across product, firmware, platform, operations, and application engineering teams to turn ambiguous business and technical needs into reliable, scalable, and maintainable software systems.

You will be expected to lead through technical depth, sound judgment, and influence. You will own important architecture decisions, guide implementation strategy, and help engineers across multiple teams build better systems.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership for systems spanning IoT device control, smart home automation, energy, HVAC, water, and connected-device experiences.
• Lead architecture and design for major software components, services, APIs, data flows, and integration patterns.
• Help evolve existing monolithic systems into more modular, scalable, reliable, and maintainable systems.
• Partner with product, firmware, platform, operations, and application teams to turn ambiguous needs into clear technical direction.
• Mentor engineers at multiple levels and help raise the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, technical guidance, and reusable patterns.
• Drive cross-team collaboration and execution across multiple technical domains.
• Evaluate new technologies, frameworks, and methodologies where they can materially improve product capabilities or engineering outcomes.
• Reason across the full product stack, including backend services, databases, APIs, web and mobile experiences, device integrations, automation logic, and operational tooling.
• Be an expert on system architecture, functionality, data flows, operational processes, and the tools needed to operate production systems effectively.
• Provide technical thought leadership for major software components, systems, and features, earning alignment and driving adoption across teams.
• Exercise strong engineering judgment: know when to move quickly, when to invest in a robust platform capability, and when to avoid unnecessary complexity.
• Bring your ideas. We want our engineers to collaborate on product development, not blindly build to a spec.
• Other duties as assigned.

What You Need

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 15+ years of professional software development experience.
• Proven experience designing, building, and delivering complex software systems.
• Strong object-oriented programming skills; experience with C#/.NET or a similar object-oriented language is required; direct C# and .NET experience would be a major plus.
• Significant database design, performance, and development experience.
• Experience leading technical direction across teams and influencing architecture beyond a single project or codebase.
• Experience mentoring engineers and helping develop people, practices, and reusable technical solutions.
• Ability to select appropriate frameworks, architecture patterns, and technical approaches, then educate teams and drive adoption.
• Strong analytical skills and a practical problem-solving mindset.
• Ability to lead and influence across teams without relying solely on reporting authority.
• Ability to reason across the full product stack, including backend services, data stores, APIs, device integrations, and web/mobile user experiences.
• Strong understanding of object-oriented design, software development lifecycles, and long-term maintainability concerns.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to engineers, product owners, and business stakeholders.

Experience That Would Be a Major Plus

• Experience with IoT, smart home, energy management, HVAC, water, automation, or connected-device systems.
• Experience working with physical systems, hardware devices, firmware teams, or embedded-device integrations.
• Experience with event-driven systems, device telemetry, automation/rules engines, or distributed systems.
• Experience in modernizing monolithic systems or decomposing systems into modular services.
• Experience designing systems where cloud software interacts with deployed physical devices and must account for latency, reliability, compatibility, and operational visibility.

Why This Role Matters

The emPower team works on software that connects the digital and physical world: devices, homes, energy systems, water systems, HVAC systems, automation logic, and customer-facing control experiences. The systems we build must be reliable, understandable, scalable, and adaptable as new devices, integrations, and product capabilities are added.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will help shape the architecture behind these experiences. Your work will influence multiple teams, improve the systems engineers build on, and help Alarm.com continue delivering connected-device products that are useful, reliable, and easy for customers to trust.

Please note that sponsorship of new applicants for employment authorization, or any other immigration-related support, is not available for this position at this time.

WHY WORK FOR ALARM.COM?

• Collaborate with outstanding people: We hire only the best. Our standards are high and our employees enjoy working alongside other high achievers.
• Make an immediate impact: New employees can expect to be given real responsibility for bringing new technologies to the marketplace. You are empowered to perform as soon as you join the Alarm.com team!
• Gain well rounded experience: Alarm.com offers a diverse and dynamic environment where you will get the chance to work directly with executives and develop expertise across multiple areas of the business.
• Community and Camaraderie: One of our core values is to 'Keep It Fun,' which to us means fostering a strong sense of community. Our culture is built on collaboration and connection, where we celebrate our successes and believe that a positive, engaging environment is key to doing our best work.
• Alarm.com values working together and collaborating in person. Our employees work from the office 4 days a week.

COMPANY INFO

Alarm.com is the leading platform for intelligently connected properties. Millions of homeowners and businesses rely on Alarm.com's technology to secure, monitor, and manage their environments from anywhere. Our comprehensive suite of solutions—including security, video surveillance, access control, active shooter detection, intelligent automation, energy management, and wellness—is delivered exclusively through a trusted network of thousands of professional service providers and commercial integrators across North America and worldwide. Alarm.com's common stock is traded on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ALRM. Alarm.com delivers serious security for serious people.

For more information, please visit www.alarm.com.

COMPANY BENEFITS

Our total rewards package is designed to support you holistically—in your health, your finances, and your life outside of work. The package includes medical plans with company subsidies, a Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution, and a 401(k) with an employer match. We encourage a healthy work-life balance with paid vacation that increases with tenure, paid holidays, wellness time, and paid maternity and bonding leave. To complete the package, we also provide company-paid disability and life insurance, all within a collaborative and casual work environment.

Alarm.com is an Equal Opportunity Employer

In connection with your application, we collect information that identifies, reasonably relates to or describes you ("Personal Information"). The categories of Personal Information that we may collect include your name, government-issued identification number(s), email address, mailing address, other contact information, emergency contact information, employment history, educational history, criminal record, and demographic information. We collect and use those categories of Personal Information about you for human resources and other business management purposes, including identifying and evaluating you as a candidate for potential or future employment or future positions, recordkeeping in relation to recruiting and hiring, conducting criminal background checks as permitted by law, conducting analytics, and ensuring compliance with applicable legal requirements and Company policies. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that we may retain some of the personal data that you provide in your application for our internal operations such as managing our recruitment system and ensuring that we comply with labor laws and regulations even after we have made our employment decision.

Notice To Third Party Agencies:
Alarm.com understands the value of professional recruiting services. However, we are not accepting resumes from recruiters or employment agencies for this position. In the event we receive a resume or candidate referral for this position from a third-party recruiter or agency without a previously signed agreement, we reserve the right to pursue and hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to you. If you are interested in working with Alarm.com, please email your company information and standard agreement to RecruitingPartnerships@Alarm.com.