Lead Software Engineer (Hybrid)

Identity Digital • Bellevue, WA

2h • $150,000 - $200,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Lead Software Engineer will play a pivotal role owning delivery and operational excellence for our DNS-anchored identity platform for AI agents. This role combines deep hands-on coding with team leadership, guiding Sr. Engineers and DevOps/SREs, driving day-to-day execution, and taking full ownership of production. Working alongside a Principal Architect who sets the technical vision, you will translate that vision into reliable, running software while shaping team processes, mentoring teammates, and building the foundation for sustainable growth at a critical, well-funded stage of innovation where your technical and organizational decisions will define how we scale. This role reports to the VP, Engineering & Technical Architect and works closely with the Principal Architect.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building and shipping production software, with at least 2 years in a technical lead, staff engineer, or engineering manager role
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a relevant field or equivalent experience
• Experience leading engineers - you've run 1:1s, provided technical mentorship, and helped people grow
• Comfortable leading through technical credibility and influence as much as positional authority
• Strong full-stack engineering skills with deep proficiency in at least one of Go, Python, or TypeScript/Node, and working familiarity with the others
• Experience with modern front-end development (React preferred) and component-driven UI architecture
• Proven track record of driving architectural decisions for distributed systems API design, event-driven architectures, service decomposition, and data modeling
• Experience with cryptographic concepts (public key infrastructure, TLS/mTLS, JWTs/JWKS, digital signatures) or a strong desire and demonstrated ability to learn quickly in this domain
• Familiarity with cloud-native architectures and services (AWS preferred; GCP/Azure exposure is a plus)
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, or similar). Understanding of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and automated testing strategies
• Working knowledge of AI/ML concepts and enthusiasm for the emerging agentic AI ecosystem
• Experience building 0-to-1 products comfortable with ambiguity, shifting priorities, and making pragmatic tradeoffs to ship
• Strong written and verbal communication skills. Able to articulate technical decisions to both engineering peers and non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to travel as needed
• Ability to work across time zones as part of a global organization as needed
• Reliable transportation to the workplace
• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with DNS, domain registration systems, identity/access management, or certificate lifecycle management is a significant plus

Responsibilities

• Act as lead developer hands-on designing, building, and shipping features across the stack, from backend services (Go, Python, TypeScript/Node) to front-end interfaces (React) to cloud infrastructure (AWS)
• Own execution of the engineering roadmap. Break down ambiguous problems into well-scoped work, manage delivery cadence, identify risks early, and ensure the team ships incrementally and reliably
• Collaborate with the Principal Architect to translate architectural vision into production-ready implementations. Contribute to architectural decisions and own the path from design to deployed, running software
• Collaborate closely with Product and Design to turn complex identity, DNS, and AI agent concepts into clear technical plans and intuitive product experiences
• Actively participate in and drive code reviews to maintain quality, share knowledge, and ensure consistency across the codebase
• Lead and mentor a team of Sr. Software Engineers and DevOps/SRE engineers providing technical direction, career mentorship, regular 1:1s to support technical initiatives
• Raise the technical bar across the engineering organization through mentoring, pairing, and establishing engineering standards and best practices
• Partner with the VP of Engineering to define development processes, team culture, and hiring priorities
• Be a key voice in recruiting helping identify, evaluate, and close engineering talent
• Own production operations for the platform uptime, monitoring, alerting, incident response, and post-incident review
• Drive operational maturity across the team: observability, runbooks, on-call rotations, SLOs, and capacity planning
• Ensure security hardening, key rotation, certificate lifecycle management, and compliance readiness are built into the platform from day one not bolted on later
• Coordinate cross-team technical integration, including with the Cadena cryptographic team, external service providers, and Identity Digital's broader engineering organization
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies, frameworks, and patterns where they deliver clear value particularly in AI/ML tooling, agent frameworks, and identity/security infrastructure
• Actively models and promotes Identity Digitals core values through day-to-day interactions, behaviors, and decision-making
• Other duties as assigned

Benefits

• US team members (and their spouses, domestic partners, and/or dependent children) are covered by generously subsidized medical, dental, and vision insurance which includes company contributions to a Health Savings Accounts.
• Team members are also covered by company-paid life and disability insurance and have the option of participating in employee-paid supplemental life, accidental death and dismemberment, critical illness, and accident insurance.
• In addition, team members can enroll in the company's 401(k) plan with up to a 5% match.
• You receive 15 days of paid vacation yearly, increasing to 20 days after one year.
• Additionally, you get 5 days of paid sick leave, 13 paid holidays, and 20 weeks of paid parental leave for birthing parents, 12 weeks for others.
• Also, there's an opportunity for tuition reimbursement for qualifying expenses.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level