JobsMotorola Solutions

Principal Streaming Data Architect

Motorola Solutions · Schaumburg, IL

Posted Sep 7, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Sep 20, 2026

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Likely interview questions for this role

Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.

Behavioral

Tell me about a time you had to choose between two stream processing frameworks for a high-velocity data pipeline. What was the deciding factor?

how the candidate evaluates tradeoffs like throughput, latency, operational cost, and team skill when picking technology, and whether they can defend that decision under scrutiny

Have you worked with data that has to meet CJIS, FIPS 140-3, or FedRAMP High requirements? Tell me about a specific technical decision that changed because of a compliance requirement like that.

real exposure to government-grade compliance constraints and how they translate into concrete engineering tradeoffs, not just awareness of the acronyms

Tell me about a real-time machine learning model you helped operationalize inside a streaming pipeline. What broke first when you moved it from batch to streaming?

actual experience deploying ML into low-latency pipelines versus only working with data scientists at arm's length

Describe a time your streaming system had a partial outage or a node failure. What happened to in-flight data and how did you know you hadn't lost anything?

concrete understanding of fault tolerance, checkpointing, and how the candidate verifies zero data loss claims rather than assuming them

Tell me about a time you had to push back on a product or compliance requirement because it wasn't technically feasible within the latency or throughput constraints of the system.

ability to communicate technical constraints across functions like compliance and product without simply saying yes to everything

Technical

Walk me through how you would design sub-second deduplication of sensor broadcast messages coming from thousands of distributed sensors, some of which might be sending duplicate or out-of-order events.

whether the candidate has real hands-on knowledge of stateful stream processing patterns like windowing, watermarks, and state stores, not just textbook familiarity

How would you design a schema registry and event-driven data model that keeps thousands of sensor telemetry pipelines consistent as new sensor types get added over time?

depth of experience with schema evolution, backward compatibility, and preventing pipeline breakage at scale

What does data lineage and auditability actually look like at the code and infrastructure level in a stream processing system, not just in a diagram?

whether the candidate has actually built governance into a live streaming system versus describing it conceptually

How would you design encryption and access control for data-in-transit and in-memory state in a stateful stream processor, given strict federal security standards?

technical depth on securing data at rest in memory and in flight within a streaming engine, an area many architects only think about for data at rest in storage

When you're assessing whether a stream processing framework can actually handle thousands of messages per second reliably, what do you test before you trust it in production?

rigor around load testing, chaos testing, and validating vendor or framework claims rather than taking documentation at face value

Situational

Say you're handed our current setup with Azure Event Hubs feeding into Databricks and told throughput is fine but end-to-end latency from sensor to UI is too high. How would you find where the time is going?

systematic debugging approach across a distributed pipeline versus guessing or jumping to a rewrite

Imagine a geospatial dataset needs to be anonymized in-stream before it reaches both a real-time UI and a spatial database, and the two consumers need slightly different levels of anonymization. How would you architect that?

ability to design flexible, multi-consumer pipelines that satisfy different privacy and performance needs without duplicating logic

If you inherited a stream processing pipeline that was technically working but the junior engineers on the team didn't understand why it was built the way it was, how would you approach bringing them up to speed while still shipping features?

mentorship style and whether they can balance teaching with delivery pressure, since this role explicitly requires developing junior and mid-level engineers

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The full job description

As published by Motorola Solutions.

Company Overview At Motorola Solutions, we believe that everything starts with our people. We’re a global close-knit community, united by the relentless pursuit to help keep people safer everywhere. We build and connect technologies to help protect people, property and places. Our solutions foster the collaboration that’s critical for safer communities, safer schools, safer hospitals, safer businesses, and ultimately, safer nations. Connect with a career that matters, and help us build a safer future. Department Overview Motorola Solutions creates innovative, mission-critical communication solutions and services that help public safety and commercial customers build safer cities and thriving communities around the world.We look for the most advanced problems solvers - like you - to help us create technologies that rise to the challenges of our customers. To connect firemen to policemen to emergency responders to nurses to specialists to lives saved. To protect communities, grow businesses and make work safer and more efficient. Motorola Solutions is looking for a self motivated individuals to help drive the next generation public safety experience, and to work with a team of top experienced professionals to enable mission critical services and solutions. Job Description The Principal Streaming Data Architect will lead the real-time data streaming and processing architecture for our nationwide sensor detection platform. He/She will work with our engineering, product, compliance, and infrastructure teams in developing a stateful, low-latency stream processing engine capable of handling thousands of messages per second from distributed sensors. These real-time data pipelines will be used by our customers to monitor secure perimeters, track asset movements, and ensure public safety. • Assess our existing data ingestion and processing solutions (including Azure Event Hubs and Azure Databricks) and advise on the optimal stream processing frameworks to process high-velocity data efficiently and securely. • Use advanced distributed systems engineering to design and develop stateful stream processing applications that achieve sub-second deduplication of sensor broadcast messages across thousands of sensors. • Design and implement a robust schema registry and event-driven data modeling strategy to ensure consistency and high data quality across all sensor telemetry pipelines. • Build the technical data governance foundation within the streaming architecture, ensuring strict data lineage, metadata management, and auditability of data flows. • Collaborate with Data Science teams to operationalize and deploy real-time machine learning models (e.g., anomaly detection, predictive tracking) directly into the stream processing pipelines. • Develop processes and patterns to consume telemetry from ingestion layers while ensuring fault tolerance, zero data loss, and end-to-end latency from sensor to UI. • Partner with DevSecOps to ensure data-in-transit and in-memory state comply with strict CJIS, FIPS 140-3, and FedRAMP High standards. • Develop the technical skills of junior and mid-level team members by providing hands-on architecture reviews and mentorship. • Work directly with the geospatial data engineering and backend teams to design, implement, and validate pipelines that anonymize data in-stream and feed both real-time UIs and spatial databases. #LI-JM2 Target Base Salary Range: $158,800  - $185,600  USD Consistent with Motorola Solutions values and applicable law, we provide the following information to promote pay transparency and equity. Pay within this range varies and depends on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The actual offer will be based on the individual candidate.   Basic Requirements • Bachelor's Degree OR 10+ years experience. • Must be a US Citizen due to the nature of some contracts. Travel Requirements None Relocation Provided None Position Type Experienced Referral Payment Plan No Our U.S. Benefits include: • Incentive Bonus Plans • Medical, Dental, Vision benefits • 401K with Company Match • 10 Paid Holidays • Generous Paid Time Off Packages • Employee Stock Purchase Plan • Paid Parental & Family Leave • and more! EEO Statement Motorola Solutions is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally-protected characteristic.  We are proud of our people-first and community-focused culture, empowering every Motorolan to be their most authentic self and to do their best work to deliver on the promise of a safer world. If you’d like to join our team but feel that you don’t quite meet all of the preferred skills, we’d still love to hear why you think you’d be a great addition to our team. We’re committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruiting experience for candidates with disabilities, or other physical or mental health conditions. To request an accommodation, please complete this  Reasonable Accommodations Form  so we can assist you.

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