Lead Software Engineer, Platform Authentication

Docusign • Seattle, WA

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

Docusign’s Platform Authentication team builds identity and authentication capabilities that enable secure, reliable access across Docusign products and services. The Lead Software Engineer will help define and deliver authentication infrastructure, including login, single sign-on, OAuth, token services, session management, and other identity platform capabilities. The work involves highly available, security-sensitive distributed systems used by customers and internal teams around the world.

This individual-contributor role combines backend engineering with practical authentication and identity experience. The engineer will lead technical design and delivery for complex initiatives, influence partner teams, and improve the platform’s quality, security, and operational maturity. The position reports to the Manager, Engineering.

The role is hybrid, with a required office presence at least two days per week. The frequency may vary by team, but weekly in-office attendance is expected. The position is not eligible for employment in Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wyoming.

Requirements

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience designing, building, and operating production backend services and distributed systems.
• Experience programming in one or more modern languages such as Java, C#, Go, or TypeScript/Node.js.
• Experience building or integrating authentication and identity systems.
• Experience with OAuth 2.0/OAuth 2.1 concepts and flows, including authorization code with PKCE, client credentials, refresh tokens, scopes, consent, and token lifetime management.
• Experience with OpenID Connect (OIDC), including ID tokens, claims, discovery, nonce/state validation, and JWKS/key rotation.
• Experience with SAML 2.0, including service-provider and identity-provider concepts, assertions, metadata, certificates, and single sign-on.
• Experience with JWTs, signing and verification, key management, token validation, and common implementation risks.
• Experience applying secure-by-design practices, threat modeling, and defenses against common authentication vulnerabilities.
• Experience designing RESTful APIs and integrating with internal or external identity providers.
• Experience leading technical decisions, simplifying complex systems, and delivering outcomes across team boundaries.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with large-scale, multi-region, highly available identity or security platforms.
• Experience with WebAuthn, FIDO2, passkeys, MFA, adaptive authentication, or risk-based access controls.
• Experience with OAuth 2.0 extensions or related patterns such as JWT bearer assertions, certificate-based client authentication, or token exchange.
• Experience operating services with strong reliability, latency, and security requirements.
• Experience with MSF services and service decomposition, including breaking larger services into smaller, well-bounded services with clear interfaces, ownership, and migration plans.
• Familiarity with containers, orchestration, cloud platforms, CI/CD, and infrastructure automation.
• Experience with observability platforms for metrics, logs, tracing, security events, and auditability.
• Experience working with privacy, compliance, or enterprise security requirements.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of mentoring engineers and influencing architecture.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and operation of secure, scalable authentication and identity services.
• Own significant technical initiatives from problem definition and design through implementation, launch, and ongoing operation.
• Build highly available APIs and distributed services supporting authentication, authorization, token issuance, federation, session management, and identity lifecycle workflows.
• Apply authentication and authorization standards to real-world product and platform requirements.
• Partner with Product Management, Security, Infrastructure, and application engineering teams to define requirements, evaluate tradeoffs, and deliver reliable solutions.
• Establish and evolve engineering practices for security, availability, observability, testing, and incident response.
• Investigate complex production issues, lead root-cause analysis, and drive durable improvements to prevent recurrence.
• Review designs and code, provide technical mentorship, and help grow the authentication engineering community.
• Communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders, influence decisions, and build alignment across teams.
• Contribute to an inclusive, collaborative culture focused on customer trust, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement.

Benefits

• Company bonus plan for non-sales roles, calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.
• Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).
• Paid time off and paid company holidays based on region.
• Paid parental leave of up to six months after birth, adoption, or foster care placement.
• Health benefit plan options, including 100% employer-paid and minimum employee-contribution plans from day one of employment.
• Retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions.
• Learning and development options, including coaching, online courses, and education reimbursements.
• Compassionate care leave following the loss of a loved one and other life-changing events.

What This Job Offers

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