Software Engineer, Agent Auth

Vercel • San Francisco, CA

4d

About The Position

Vercel is hiring a Software Engineer for its Agent Auth and Identity team. The role focuses on building identity, authentication, and authorization systems that allow people and agents to authenticate, delegate access, and act safely across Vercel and connected services. The work spans foundational systems and developer-facing APIs and SDKs, with responsibility for systems from design through long-term production operation.

The engineer will help define how agents establish identity, act on behalf of users and teams, and receive scoped, time-bound, auditable access. The role involves working with modern and emerging standards, including OAuth 2.x and OIDC, and contributing to the development of agent identity and trust practices. The engineer will collaborate with product, security, and platform teams, participate in an on-call rotation, and may contribute to open-source projects and community discussions.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of experience designing, building, and operating backend systems in production at scale.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript or a comparable backend language, and willingness to work primarily in TypeScript.
• Solid understanding of authentication and authorization concepts, including sessions, tokens, OAuth/OIDC flows, permission models, and secrets management.
• Security-minded engineering approach that considers threat models, least privilege, and failure modes during design.
• Track record of end-to-end ownership, from design and implementation through long-term operation.
• Ability to reason about architectural tradeoffs and balance long-term vision with pragmatic delivery.
• Strong cross-team collaboration skills and ability to drive alignment toward shared goals.
• Curiosity and comfort working in a fast-moving space where solutions are still being figured out.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building or operating identity providers, authentication platforms, or access-control systems used by other developers.
• Experience with delegated authorization, workload identity, service-to-service authentication, or machine credentials.
• Experience with LLM-powered agents, tool calling, or protocols such as MCP.
• Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure and Terraform infrastructure as code.
• Familiarity with React or Next.js.
• Contributions to open-source projects or standards bodies.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate identity, authentication, and authorization systems for people and agents.
• Develop systems for agents to prove their identity, act on behalf of users and teams, and receive scoped, time-bound, auditable access.
• Build secure, scalable APIs, services, and SDKs that make authentication straightforward for developers and their agents.
• Work with standards such as OAuth 2.x, OIDC, and agent-focused protocols, and help influence their development.
• Lead projects end-to-end, identifying opportunities, setting technical direction, and delivering improvements in security, reliability, and developer experience.
• Partner with product, security, and platform teams across Vercel.
• Participate in the on-call rotation and take responsibility for critical-system reliability.
• Contribute to open source and broader community discussions about agent identity and trust.
• Write clean, efficient, tested, and well-documented code.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Inclusive healthcare package.
• Mentorship and events that support professional development and networking.
• Flexible Time Off.
• Work equipment provided for the role.
• Work-from-home budget to outfit a workspace.
• Potential eligibility for a company bonus or variable pay program, depending on the role.

What This Job Offers

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