Senior Software Engineer - Backend (Cloud Architecture, Workflow Automation & Systems Integration)

Description

Position at MTA Headquarters

JOB TITLE:

Senior Software Engineer

SALARY RANGE:

$126,745 - $149,600

DEPT/DIV:

Information Technology

SUPERVISOR:

Product Director, Legal, Safety, and Risk

LOCATION:

2 Broadway, New York, NY 10004

HOURS OF WORK:

9:00 am - 5:30 pm (7.5 hours/day) or as required

This position is eligible for telework which is currently 2 days per week. New hires are eligible to apply 30 days after their effective date of hire.

Opening

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is North America's largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile travel area surrounding New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut. The MTA network comprises the nation's largest bus fleet and more subway and commuter rail cars than all other U.S. transit systems combined. MTA strives to provide a safe and reliable commute, excellent customer service, and rewarding opportunities.

About Us

The MTA transportation network has a very large system and infrastructure for financial, business, automated train, transportation, power, and physical security. The MTA IT Department is centrally responsible for providing a full range of Information and Operational Technology services to the MTA agencies and administrative units through its operating and support units. Services are provided on a 7/24/365 basis in support of the MTA organization and its ridership.

MTA IT's Product Development group is empowered, multi-functional teams focused on the end-to-end management of development products from strategy to delivery. Using innovative processes and tools, the teams are responsible for developing and maintaining highly effective, secure, and innovative transportation, operational and back-end information systems to support MTA goals and priorities.

Summary

Leads requirements management, software design, and engineering, and testing activities across all stages and iterations of medium complexity software development. The role is responsible for using defined models, methods, and tools. May own medium impact/value services or products.

Critical Skills:

End-to-End Architecture & Development:
Ability to design, build, and scale workflow-driven, cloud-native backend systems, owning solutions from initial architecture through deployment and long-term support. Strong grounding in modular system design and domain-driven design, including:

Serverless platforms (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Functions)
Workflow automation engines (AWS Step Functions, Temporal, Durable Functions)
Asynchronous event-driven systems (Pub/Sub, SQS/SNS, EventHub, Kafka)
Containerization (ECS/Fargate, AKS, GKE, Cloud Run)
Designing robust approval/state-machine logic for NOV review and supervisor workflows

Identity & Access Management:
Deep experience with enterprise IAM patterns, including AWS Cognito, Azure AD, Google Cloud Platform IAM, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, and token validation strategies across distributed systems.

API & Systems Integration:
Expertise in designing secure RESTful APIs and real-time/near-real-time integrations that connect cloud services, mobile systems, and legacy platforms. Strong ability to integrate with external and legacy systems such as TABIS via:
Managed API gateways (AWS API Gateway, Azure APIM, Google Cloud Platform API Gateway)
REST and SOAP endpoints
Secure file exchanges (SFTP/PGP)
Message queues or polling APIs
Retry, deduplication, and idempotency patterns

Data Engineering & Modeling:
Experience designing schemas and data models for Notice of Violations (NOV), NOV documents, supervisor workflows, audit logs, access-control structures (RBAC), and workflow/state transitions. Skilled in:
ETL/ELT pipeline development (Azure Data Factory, Dataflow tools)
Enterprise data warehouse integrations
Scheduled/batch jobs for TABIS reporting
Event sourcing or immutable audit trails (preferred)
Translating complex field workflows into maintainable system logic

Security, Authentication & Encryption:
Deep understanding of end-to-end security for sensitive law-enforcement data, including:
Encryption in transit and at rest (SSL/TLS, AES)
Secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Cloud Platform Secrets Manager)
Defensive coding against injection, spoofing, and replay attacks
Familiarity with CJIS or similar compliance frameworks

Database Engineering & Optimization:
Advanced proficiency with relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL stores (DynamoDB, Firestore, Azure Cosmos DB), including:
Query optimization and indexing
Caching strategies
Transaction integrity and consistency
Data partitioning and performance tuning

Cloud, DevOps & Observability:
Strong operational discipline in deploying, securing, and monitoring cloud-based backend systems, including:
CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps)
Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep)
Logging & monitoring (CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Logging)
Dashboards for uptime, API performance, load, audit activity, and user analytics

Documentation, Reporting & Analytics:
Experience building data-driven reporting capabilities for executive staff and operations supervisors using BI tools such as Power BI, Looker, QuickSight, or Tableau. Ability to support real-time dashboards, compliance reporting, and operational visibility.

Responsibilities

• Leads requirements management, software design and engineering, and testing activities across all stages and iterations of medium complexity software development and integration initiatives, using agreed models, methods, and tools. Assists with the organization's selection, adaptation, and adoption of new models, methods, and tools. Collaborates across parties involved in product, systems, or service design.
• May own medium impact/value services or products. Defines, documents, and executes medium-sized projects within business objectives and resource constraints, ensuring adherence to agreed enterprise architectures, and the application of effective change- release-, risk-, and quality-management processes.
• Maintains software support processes and documentation and applies software management tools to investigate and resolve moderately complex issues, prioritize, and diagnose incidents, collect system statistics, and create reports.
• Develops system and acceptance testing criteria related to functional and non-functional requirements, user stories, features, business processes, and business rules. Designs, specifies, and executes test cases and scenarios.
• Adept in applying agreed tools and techniques to evaluate user experiences of programs and products, and validate that usability, accessibility and visual design requirements are satisfied.
• Develops, maintains, and applies tools and documentation to track, log and maintain accurate and complete system information. Audits medium-complexity software systems for adherence to configuration standards.
• Plans and conducts assigned assurance assessments and suggests opportunities for quality and safety improvement. Contributes to the identification, analysis, and documentation of software-related safety risks, and proposes corrective actions.
• Monitors supplier performance and customer satisfaction. Engages proactively and collaboratively with suppliers to resolve incidents and problems.
• Continuously develops and maintains adept knowledge of software engineering practices, emerging trends, and technologies.
• Provides technical advice to project teams and mentors less experienced staff to foster talent development.
• Travel may be required to other MTA locations or other external sites.
• May need to work outside of normal work hours supporting 24/7 operations (i.e., evenings and weekends).
• Performs other duties and tasks as assigned.
• Provides technical advice to project teams and mentors less experienced staff to foster talent development.
• Observing the work performed by the contractor.
• Reviewing invoices and approving them if the work has contractual standards.
• Addressing performance issues with the contractor when possible.
• Escalating issues to other parties as needed.
• Regular and reliable attendance is expected and required.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's degree and a minimum of 5 years of relevant experience. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• Experience: 5 years
• Certification(s): Requires at least one certification in the current platform/domain/technical skill. Possible certifications could be, but are not limited to:

Relevant Certifications

Agile Project Management

Azure Solutions Architect

C Programming Language (CLA, CLP, CPA, CPP)

Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP)

Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)

Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)

Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CISSLP)

Certified Software Engineer (ICCP)

CIW Web Development Professional

CompTIA Security+ Certification

Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC)

Technical Skills

• Advanced programming experience in a business setting.
• Adept proficiency in at least one software engineering methodology, including but not limited to: Waterfall, Agile, Scrum, DevOps, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, Lean, Rapid Application Development (RAD).
• Adept programming experience with programming language(s) such as, but not limited to, Ruby, Python, Java, C, C++, C#, COBOL, SQL, Net, DBA, JavaScript.
• Adept with the Oracle platform.
• Adept in applying a structured validation and testing method, including but not limited to: Unit Testing, Integration Testing, System Testing, Acceptance Testing, Regression Testing.
• Advanced collaboration skills to ensure design specifications are seamlessly implemented by the development team.
• Adept familiarity with version control.
• Adept in working independently, strategically, and navigating organizational ambiguity.
• Adept in data structures and algorithms, database management.
• Adept in cybersecurity, including encryption and authentication.
• Adept in cloud computing.
• Adept in coding software alerting & notifications.
• Adept in resolving code defects & developing enhancements.
• Adept in continuous delivery processes (including code peer review), distributed monitoring & logging, distributed tracing & analysis, operation response automation, and product telemetry.
• Adept in development techniques (e.g., OOO), DevOps engineering practices, and DevSecOps Lifecycle (Secure SDLC), and the Agile framework.
• Adept in full-stack development, mobile development, web development, site reliability engineering, technology-specific frameworks, and solution design.

Behavioral Skills

• Advanced in establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with employees at all levels within the organization, and with both internal and external customers.
• Advanced in interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with both technical and non-technical peers.
• Advanced in communicating effectively, both orally and in writing, to interact with team members, customers, management, and support personnel (technical and non-technical)
• Adept in identifying and analyzing risks and developing effective mitigation strategies.
• Adept in critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Adept in active listening, attention to detail, customer service, prioritization, and problem-solving skills.
• Adept in hands-on experience with related tools.
• Adept in working independently and strategically.
• Adept technical knowledge and diverse skillset to understand various technologies, systems, and potential risks.
• Adept in managing multiple projects simultaneously and prioritizing tasks based on urgency and impact.
• Adept at working under pressure and meeting deadlines individually and collaboratively. Thinks logically, assesses problems, and is results-oriented.
• Adept in identifying complex business and technology risks and associated vulnerabilities.

Competencies

Core Competency

Proficiency Level

Competency Definition

Collaborates

Advanced

Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives

Cultivates Innovation

Adept

Creating new and better ways for the organization to be successful

Customer Focus

Adept

Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions

Communicates Effectively

Advanced

Developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences

Tech Savvy

Adept

Anticipating and adopting innovations in business-building digital

and technology applications

Technical Skills

Adept

Specialized knowledge and expertise on tools, programs, domains, platforms, and products used for specific tasks

Values Diversity

Advanced

Recognizing the value that different perspectives and cultures bring to an organization

Other Information

Pursuant to the New York State Public Officers Law & the MTA Code of Ethics, all employees who hold a policymaking position must file an Annual Statement of Financial Disclosure (FDS) with the NYS Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (the "Commission").

Equal Employment Opportunity

MTA and its subsidiary and affiliated agencies are Equal Opportunity Employers, including with respect to veteran status and individuals with disabilities.

The MTA encourages qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and abilities, including military service members, to apply.