Principal Engineer

Principal Engineer Signals Platform

Knightscope is a security technology company building the Nation's First Autonomous Security Force. The Company combines autonomous machines, advanced software, and human expertise to help protect people, property, and critical infrastructure. Knightscope's long-term mission is to make the United States of America the safest country in the world.

Knightscope is seeking a Principal Engineer to own the end-to-end technical design and architecture of Signals — our autonomous Physical Security Information Management (PSIM) platform. Signals is a mission-critical, enterprise-grade system that unifies our entire fleet of Autonomous Security Robots (K1 Super Tower, K5, K7), PTZ/Axis cameras, and AI detections into a single real-time operational pane of glass hosted on AWS Gov Cloud via Palantir Fed Start.

This role is a technical lead position that bridges deep systems architecture with day-to-day engineering leadership. You will define how multi-sensor data streams (video, audio, LiDAR, telemetry) are ingested, fused, and surfaced across role-based dashboards, real-time 3D digital twins, and AI-powered alerting workflows. You will drive key decisions across the platform's microservices, real-time data pipelines, security and compliance posture (FedRAMP High / DoD IL5 / CMMC), and integration with both internal tools and third-party systems such as Milestone VMS and Axis Communications.

• Own and evolve the end-to-end system architecture for the Signals platform, including its microservices, real-time data pipelines, APIs, and front-end integration layer.
• Design and document scalable, secure architecture patterns for multi-sensor data ingestion (video, audio, LiDAR, thermal, telemetry) from K1, K5, K7 robots and third-party devices.
• Architect the real-time 3D Digital Twin layer, including sensor fusion, spatial overlay, occlusion handling, AI-driven positional prediction, and event-linked playback.
• Define integration architecture for all internal tools (KNOC, Deployment, Service, Calibration, Grafana, Simulations) and external systems (Milestone VMS, Axis Communications, Hub Spot, Net Suite, Palantir Fed Start).
• Establish data flow design for the AI/ML autonomy layer, including anomaly detection, threat prediction, automated machine coordination, and RTX analyst decision-support pipelines.

• Lead architecture reviews, design sessions, and technical decision-making across the Signals engineering team.
• Partner with the Senior Director of Software Engineering and the Cybersecurity Program Manager to align architecture with the Product Requirements Document and Statement of Requirements.
• Mentor and guide engineers on system design principles, distributed systems patterns, and best practices for real-time streaming, edge AI, and Gov Cloud environments.
• Drive technical roadmap planning, identifying risks, dependencies, and sequencing across the platform's build phases.
• Evaluate build-vs-buy-vs-integrate tradeoffs for platform components including video analytics, AI inference, digital twin engines, and alerting infrastructure.
• Continuously research and evaluate emerging technologies across AI, robotics, edge computing, sensor fusion, and physical security to identify opportunities that can enhance the Signals platform and Knightscope's broader product ecosystem, and translate findings into actionable architectural recommendations for leadership.

• Ensure the platform architecture meets FedRAMP High, DoD Impact Level 5 (IL5), and CMMC compliance requirements end-to-end.
• Define and enforce encryption standards for data-at-rest and data-in-transit across all platform components.
• Design and oversee Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) architecture to support distinct user roles: RTX Analyst, KNOC Specialist, CX Analyst, Deployment Engineer, Service Analyst, Engineering, Admin, and Executive.
• Collaborate with Palantir and AWS Gov Cloud teams to ensure all microservices, databases, and visualizations operate within the Fed Start-managed stack.

• Translate product requirements from the Signals Product Requirements Document (v1.9) and Statement of Requirements into…