A Lead CCTV Systems Engineer position is open in the Financial District, Manhattan, full-time and on-site, paying up to $17,000 a month. The role calls for 108 months of hands-on experience in the field, and it's built for someone ready to own system design and implementation decisions rather than just execute on someone else's spec. This sits within a broader technical engineering track, working on physical security infrastructure for buildings, where the stakes of a system failure are considerably higher than average.
The work
One bank branch running a network upgrade over a weekend once had every camera feed on one floor go dark for six hours because nobody flagged that the NVR was still routing through the old switch stack. Avoiding exactly that kind of gap, especially in buildings where continuous coverage isn't optional, is a core part of this role's purpose. Getting called in after the fact to explain a six-hour outage to a building's security director is a far worse conversation than catching the same issue during a pre-migration review.
- Design and implement new CCTV system capabilities and integrations based on client and building security requirements
- Troubleshoot and resolve technical issues across cameras, network infrastructure, and video management software
- Document system configurations and design decisions clearly enough for another engineer to pick up the work later
- Review configuration and integration work done by other engineers on the team before it goes live
A lot of the actual difficulty in this work isn't the camera hardware itself; it's the network layer underneath it. A misconfigured VLAN or a switch running out of PoE budget causes more outages here than a failed camera ever does, and a lead engineer is expected to diagnose that kind of thing quickly under pressure, since a security team without live feeds during business hours in a financial building isn't a minor inconvenience. Vendor coordination is a bigger part of the job than people expect coming in, too. A lead engineer here spends real time on calls with camera manufacturers, VMS vendors, and building management, translating between what each side actually needs and what's technically possible on the current network.
What's required
The baseline education requirement is a bachelor's degree, and computer science, information technology, or a similarly technical background is the expected starting point, though what a candidate has actually deployed and maintained in the field carries far more weight than the specific degree title. The role calls for 108 months of relevant, hands-on experience, not time spent adjacent to the field in a related but different technical role. That length of tenure usually means someone has already seen a full system lifecycle at least once, from initial installation through a later upgrade or full replacement, which matters more for a lead role than raw years alone.
The skills this job actually runs on:
- Deep familiarity with CCTV systems, from camera selection through full system design
- Network configuration, specifically as it applies to video and security infrastructure
- Installation and troubleshooting across both new builds and existing systems being upgraded
Those three areas cover most of what shows up in a given week, whether the task is planning a new install, chasing down an intermittent connectivity issue, or bringing an aging system up to current standards without a full rip-and-replace.
Experience with a specific video management platform like Genetec or Milestone is a genuine advantage, as is any background integrating access control systems alongside CCTV rather than treating them as separate projects. A low-voltage license or a NICET certification isn't mandatory here, but either one signals a level of formal training that tends to considerably shorten the ramp-up period at a new site. Comfort with basic scripting, enough to automate a repetitive configuration task across dozens of camera endpoints, is increasingly useful as sites get larger, though plenty of strong candidates in this field have never needed it and get by fine without it.
Pay and benefits
This role pays up to $17,000 per month, reflecting both the lead-level scope and the nine years of hands-on experience the position requires. It's a strong figure among CCTV systems engineer jobs in New York at this level, and it's set with the understanding that a candidate this experienced is likely comparing it against similar lead-level offers elsewhere in the city.
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Performance-linked bonuses
- Employer-sponsored health coverage
- 401(k) matching
Financial District, Manhattan
The role is based on-site in the Financial District, which means working directly inside some of the buildings where security infrastructure carries genuinely high stakes: banks, trading floors, and similar tenants where downtime on a camera feed isn't treated lightly. Naukri Mitra occasionally carries specialized security infrastructure roles like this one out of Lower Manhattan, and they tend to draw from a smaller, more experienced pool than a general IT support listing would. It's fully on-site, with no remote component, since the physical infrastructure being worked on doesn't allow for it. Site access in buildings like these often requires a background check and building-specific security clearance before an engineer can even get onto the floor to look at a rack, which adds a step to onboarding that's worth knowing about going in.
Applying
A resume showing specific systems worked on, platforms used, and the scale of the sites managed matters more here than a generic list of technical skills. Anyone with a portfolio of past projects, even a simple written summary of a few notable installations or upgrades, should include it. The interview process covers a technical discussion on network and system design, a walkthrough of a past project that a candidate led end-to-end, and a conversation with the security operations team about how this role would fit into their current setup. Given the seniority of the position, the process typically takes a bit longer than for an entry-level hire, closer to three or four weeks from the first conversation to the offer. Candidates coming from outside New York should factor that timeline into any relocation planning, since an offer here doesn't come with the same fast turnaround as a junior support role might.
