Engineering Manager, Authentication Platform

1Kosmos • Edison, NJ

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

1Kosmos is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead technical execution for its Authentication Platform, which provides passwordless, phishing-resistant authentication, SSO, and access services used in the login path by millions of users. This hands-on technical leadership role calls for deep familiarity with the existing platform, sound technical judgment, and the ability to turn product requirements into secure, highly available, shippable solutions.

The manager will guide a distributed team of 4–6 engineers based in India and work closely with Product and engineering leadership from the Edison, New Jersey office. The role sets architectural direction, makes design decisions, removes delivery blockers, upholds release quality, and contributes directly to the codebase when needed. The position is hybrid, with work from the Edison office three days per week and meaningful working overlap with the India-based team.

The Authentication Platform includes authentication flows, identity federation, session and token services, and customer integrations. The manager is responsible for delivery and production outcomes across passwordless login, MFA, SSO, and integrations, with particular attention to availability, login latency, security, performance, and resilience. The role reports to the SVP of Engineering and Chief Architect. Compensation is $180,000 or more depending on experience.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including recent hands-on experience guiding technical delivery and engineering teams.
• Experience building or operating authentication, SSO, or IAM platforms in production.
• Hands-on technical leadership demonstrated through architecture, code reviews, debugging, technical decisions, and direct contribution when critical.
• Ability to form an informed technical point of view, explain trade-offs, and make decisions amid ambiguity.
• Experience organizing engineering work, identifying dependencies and risks, unblocking teams, and delivering quality capabilities predictably.
• Experience with design and code reviews, automated testing, observability, incident response, root-cause analysis, and release readiness for high-availability services.
• Practical understanding of secure software development, threat modeling, data boundaries, platform security, and performance in enterprise SaaS.
• Ability to influence through technical depth, clarity, and follow-through while working across US- and India-based teams.
• Willingness to work from Edison, New Jersey three days per week and maintain meaningful working overlap with the India-based Authentication engineering team.
• Deep practical experience building, debugging, reviewing, and supporting production Node.js services, with JavaScript and TypeScript.
• Strong working knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML 2.0, FIDO2/WebAuthn, passkeys, JWT and token lifecycle management, and NIST 800-63B authenticator assurance levels.
• Experience with passwordless and multi-factor authentication, session management, adaptive or risk-based authentication, and RBAC/ABAC authorization models.
• Strong experience with service-oriented architecture, API design, inter-service communication, resiliency patterns, scalability, and performance.
• Demonstrated experience building and operating secure, scalable, multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
• Strong working knowledge of AWS services, cloud deployment patterns, security, monitoring, reliability, and cost-aware operations.
• Hands-on experience with containerized workloads, Docker, Kubernetes, deployment practices, and operational troubleshooting.
• Experience with automated build, test, deployment, and rollback practices for reliable releases.
• Experience diagnosing and improving latency, throughput, scalability, and reliability in high-volume, latency-sensitive distributed systems.

Nice To Haves

• Working knowledge of Java and Go.
• Familiarity with LDAP, Active Directory, Entra ID, SCIM provisioning, and integrations with identity providers and service providers such as Okta, Ping, and Microsoft.
• Practical understanding of PKI, certificates, key management, signing and encryption, and secure secrets handling.
• Working knowledge of GCP and Azure.

Responsibilities

• Understand the existing Authentication Platform and guide the team toward technically sound designs aligned with current capabilities and longer-term architectural direction.
• Partner with Product to shape requirements, clarify trade-offs, sequence work, and translate feature requests into executable engineering plans.
• Organize incoming work, clarify priorities, surface dependencies, and keep delivery commitments on track across passwordless login, MFA, SSO, and customer integrations.
• Participate in design discussions, code reviews, debugging, and technical problem-solving, and contribute directly to the codebase when needed.
• Establish and uphold standards for design review, code quality, test readiness, performance, security, standards compliance, and release decisions.
• Participate directly in incident response, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions for Authentication services.
• Drive sound engineering decisions across Node.js microservices, identity protocols, cloud-based SaaS deployments, Kubernetes, AWS, observability, performance, and platform resilience.
• Provide daily technical direction, remove obstacles, facilitate delivery discussions, and support engineers' technical decision-making.
• Make timely, well-reasoned technical decisions, communicate trade-offs, and constructively challenge approaches when needed.
• Collaborate with Product, QA, Security, and engineering peers to support effective, rigorous delivery and shared ownership.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity package.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Unlimited PTO policy.
• Opportunity to build and lead a critical function at a high-growth Series B startup.
• Collaborative, fast-paced culture with immediate and visible impact.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed