Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Authentication Platform

Salesforce•Bellevue, WA

10d•$172,500 - $260,100•Onsite

About The Position

The Authentication Platform Engineering Manager leads the team responsible for the core identity services that power Salesforce's production infrastructure, including Kerberos-based authentication, Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP), and Fast Identity Online 2 (FIDO2) systems. This role sits at the heart of our Production Identity and Access Management (IAM) stack, ensuring every access request across our global fleet is secure, authenticated, and resilient. You will manage a team of specialists who bridge legacy infrastructure protocols and modern, cloud-native identity standards to defend against sophisticated threats.

Requirements

13+ years of software engineering experience, including 3-5 years leading teams in high-pressure, infrastructure-centric environments.
Proven expertise in Kerberos and identity protocols such as Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), OpenID Connect (OIDC), and LDAP.
Experience managing systems with massive throughput and high-availability requirements in public cloud (AWS/GCP) or hybrid environments.
Familiarity with Java, Go, or C#, and experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes) and modern continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
Active, hands-on proficiency with AI development tools; full utilization is the baseline expectation, along with deep technical expertise sufficient to evaluate architectural integrity and make informed decisions about AI-generated output.
Experience assessing candidates on their ability to formulate effective prompts, evaluate AI outputs, and orchestrate multi-agent workflows in addition to foundational technical skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience building or maintaining enterprise-grade Identity Providers (IdP) or Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) platforms.
Understanding of hardware security modules (HSMs), public key infrastructure (PKI), and secure credential storage.
Knowledge of how authentication systems meet Payment Card Industry (PCI), SOC2, or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements.
Experience managing on-call rotations for high-visibility production services, and a track record of hiring and growing senior engineering talent.

Responsibilities

Drive the strategy and execution for the Authentication Platform, ensuring these foundational services scale horizontally across diverse environments.
Provide technical leadership across a diverse protocol stack, from Kerberos and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to modern WebAuthn/FIDO2 and TOTP implementations.
Guarantee the reliability of services that are foundational dependencies for the entire company, targeting high availability standards.
Partner with security architects to implement Zero Trust principles, ensuring the platform enforces strict adherence to least privilege and robust identity verification.
Develop each engineer's ability to work effectively in an AI-augmented environment, moving beyond tracking output to actively coaching growth into higher-level system design and architecture work.
Own how AI tools are integrated into the team's daily development cycle, including configuration, feedback loops, and the judgment calls about when human review is required to validate output.
Serve as the guardian of architectural integrity, security best practices, and technical standards as AI increases code volume, coaching engineers to critically audit AI-generated code for logic flaws, vulnerabilities, and performance issues.