Software Engineer – Distributed Systems

eBay•San Jose, CA

About The Position

eBay’s Cloud Security Engineering team is building the next generation of identity and access platforms that power secure, scalable, and seamless experiences across our global marketplace. Our distributed systems support millions of users, services, and transactions, and are foundational to eBay’s trust, safety, and reliability. As a Distributed Systems Engineer on this team, you will design and build directory services and policy engines that form the backbone of identity, access, and authorization at eBay. You will help evolve traditional identity systems into intelligent, real-time platforms. You will use advanced insights, automation, and adaptive decision-making. This will secure both human and non-human identities worldwide. You will work closely with identity, platform, and security teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience in software engineering.
7+ years of backend or distributed systems engineering experience, with strong understanding of replication, consistency, partitioning, and fault tolerance in large-scale environments.
Hands-on experience with directory services, large-scale data or identity platforms, and modern backend development (Java, Go, or similar) including building scalable APIs and microservices.
Proficiency with datastores such as SQL, NoSQL, or graph-based systems, and familiarity with modeling identity relationships, entitlements, and access policies.
Strong foundation in authorization concepts and systems (RBAC, ABAC, PBAC), with experience or interest in policy engines (e.g., OPA, Cedar), IAM/LDAP, or cloud-native identity platforms.
Practical experience with AI/ML concepts or AI-powered development tools, and exposure to cloud-native architectures (e.g., Kubernetes, service meshes) to operate secure, reliable systems at global scale.

Responsibilities

Build and deliver cloud-scale directory services that optimally manage identity, entitlement, and relationship data across eBay’s ecosystem, improving security and platform trust.
Build and optimize high-performance policy engines and low-latency identity lookup services that enable real-time, fine-grained authorization (RBAC, ABAC, PBAC) for millions of transactions.
Develop and evolve APIs and microservices for identity lookup, entitlement management, and access decisioning that are resilient, observable, and easy for partner teams to integrate.
Integrate AI/ML capabilities into authorization and policy evaluation workflows to provide intelligent access decisions, detect anomalies, and continuously improve policy efficiency.
Use AI-powered development and operations tools to increase engineering velocity, enhance code quality, and improve reliability of distributed systems in production.
Collaborate with multi-functional identity, platform, and security partners to define next-generation access and policy frameworks, participate in design reviews, and drive continuous improvement of eBay’s global security posture.