JobsMotorola Solutions

Senior Backend Java Engineer (Chicago Hybrid)

Motorola Solutions · Chicago, IL

Posted Jun 22, 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

Walk me through a time you owned the architecture for a large, distributed feature from proposal to production. What were the tradeoffs you had to sell to the team?

whether they can actually drive architectural decisions end to end, not just implement someone else's design

Tell me about a code review where you caught something serious, a security gap or a performance bottleneck, that others missed.

actual reviewing rigor and whether they can articulate specific technical judgment, not just process compliance

Describe how you've mentored a junior or mid-level engineer through a task that was too big for them to tackle alone.

real coaching ability versus just being the most senior person in the room

Tell me about a time a production incident in a high-availability system came down to something you hadn't anticipated. What did you change afterward?

whether they learn from failure and think about systemic prevention, not just firefighting

Technical

Say you need to support zero-touch enrollment for a sudden spike of devices registering at once, maybe ten times normal volume. How would you design the provisioning service to handle that without falling over?

depth of thinking on high-throughput, fault-tolerant provisioning architecture, which is the core of this platform

Tell me about the most demanding schema or indexing problem you've solved on a Postgres-family database under heavy concurrent read and write load.

real hands-on depth with Postgres/AlloyDB internals versus surface familiarity

AlloyDB is central to this role. What have you actually used it for, and where does it behave differently from vanilla Postgres in ways that changed your design?

honesty about AlloyDB-specific experience versus general Postgres knowledge

How would you design a service contract between a Java microservice and a Python microservice that need to stay in sync as both evolve independently?

contract-first API design skill and understanding of versioning and backward compatibility across language boundaries

Describe a time you used Claude or another large language model for something beyond a simple chatbot, like structured data extraction or log parsing. What broke first, and how did you fix your prompts?

whether their LLM experience is genuinely production-grade prompt engineering, not just casual API calls

What experience do you have running services on GKE and Cloud Run, and how did you decide which one fit a given workload?

practical GCP deployment judgment rather than checkbox familiarity with the platform

Situational

If you were asked to build a conversational provisioning assistant that lets support staff configure devices through natural language, what would worry you most about letting an LLM touch production configuration, and how would you guard against it?

judgment about safety, validation, and guardrails when giving an LLM real operational power

You get a set of vague requirements from product management for a new device lifecycle feature. Walk me through how you'd turn that into groomed, parallelizable technical stories for the team.

ability to translate ambiguous business asks into concrete, delegable engineering work

If PR review cycles were dragging the team down, what would you actually build or change to cut that time, and how would you know it worked?

practical experience with pipeline tooling like automated guardrails or AI coding assistants, and whether they measure outcomes

Practice this interview out loud.

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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 Join our dynamic, agile R&D team as a Senior Backend Java Engineer, where you will serve as a key architectural driver for our Device Provisioning and Management platform, deployed on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). You will be responsible for the end-to-end success of major features—from proposing architectural approaches for large-scale device configurations to defining service contracts for AI-driven automation. In this role, you will serve as a Technical Lead, actively mentoring junior developers, elevating engineering standards, and pioneering the use of advanced LLMs to optimize device lifecycles. Job Description Responsibilities • Architectural Ownership: Propose and facilitate technical discussions to arrive at agreed-upon architectural plans for high-throughput device provisioning, zero-touch enrollment, and lifecycle management services. • Contract Definition & Coordination: Own the APIs for the Device Management Domain, coordinating with external hardware and consumer teams to ensure seamless integration, rapid registration, and data integrity. • Feature Grooming & Delegation: Groom technical stories from Product Management requirements and break down complex tasks for the team to enable rapid, parallel development. • Database & Storage Leadership: Lead the implementation, optimization, and scaling of relational data layers using AlloyDB (and PostgreSQL), ensuring data integrity, high availability, and efficient indexing for millions of device records. • Advanced AI Engineering: Architect and implement advanced prompt engineering workflows utilizing Anthropic Claude to automate configuration generation, analyze complex device logs, and power conversational provisioning assistants. • Quality, Review & Mentorship: Conduct thorough code reviews, serving as a trusted source to catch edge cases, security gaps, and performance bottlenecks, while actively mentoring junior and mid-level engineers. • Pipeline & Tooling Transformation: Actively contribute to development pipeline improvements (e.g., automated guardrails, RAG systems, and AI coding assistants) to significantly cut down PR cycle times. Requirements • Experience & Impact: Bachelor’s degree plus 5+ years of progressive technical experience, demonstrating successful ownership of complex, distributed features and a track record of mentoring technical peers. • Database Mastery: Practical, deep experience managing and optimizing Postgres-based databases (ideally GCP AlloyDB) for high-concurrency write/read profiles. • GCP Proficiency: Proven ability to deploy, manage, and scale microservices on GCP (GKE, Cloud Run, Cloud Storage, and database management). • API/Contract Ownership: Extensive experience designing robust service contracts and managing dependencies between Python and Java microservices. • Claude & Prompt Engineering: Practical experience leveraging Anthropic Claude (or similar advanced LLMs) for systemic prompt design, structured data extraction, and log parsing. • System Integrity: Deep understanding of scale challenges, fault-tolerant design, and the ability to anticipate and address stress points within high-availability provisioning architectures. Target Base Salary Range: $130,000 USD - $150,000 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. Note: Candidate must be in the Chicago office 2 days per week. #LI-MP2 #LI-HYBRD Basic Requirements • Bachelors Degree with 5+ engineering experience • AND 4+ years of Java experience • Must be a U.S. citizen with the ability to obtain necessary security clearance as required by government contract. 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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