Staff Software Engineer - Wallet (Authentication & Verification Experiences)

ID.me • Mountain View, CA

9h • Onsite

About The Position

ID.me is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Wallet – Authentication & Verification Experiences team. This team owns the core authentication and identity verification flows that millions of members rely on every day — from secure login and multi-factor authentication to passkeys, biometrics, and the end-to-end member experiences that establish trust and unlock access to government, healthcare, and commercial services.
As a Staff Engineer, you will be a technical anchor for one of ID.me’s most critical and high-scale engineering domains. You will drive architecture decisions, lead complex cross-team initiatives, and raise the bar for engineering quality, security, and reliability. You’ll collaborate closely with product, security, and platform teams to shape the next generation of authentication and verification experiences at ID.me.
This position will work from our Mountain View, CA office five days per week.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating high-availability production services.
• Demonstrated familiarity with AI-assisted development tooling (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent) and a commitment to fostering an AI-first engineering culture that maximizes team quality and velocity.
• Demonstrated expertise designing and implementing authentication systems — including MFA, SSO, OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and/or passkeys (FIDO2/WebAuthn).
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals in one or more languages such as Ruby, Java, Go, or Python, with a track record of building secure, scalable APIs and services.
• Experience operating distributed systems at scale, including caching, async processing, and cloud-native infrastructure (GCP preferred).
• Proven ability to lead complex, cross-team technical initiatives from definition through delivery with minimal oversight.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with experience influencing technical direction across engineering, product, and security stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

• Deep knowledge of identity proofing and credentialing standards, including NIST 800-63-3 (IAL2/AAL2), Kantara Initiative requirements, or equivalent federal/state compliance frameworks.
• Experience building biometric authentication systems, including liveness detection, face match, or document-based identity verification.
• Familiarity with passkey/FIDO2 ecosystem including WebAuthn ceremonies, authenticator management, and cross-device authentication flows.
• Background in fraud detection, compromised credential checking, or account security systems at consumer scale.
• Hands-on experience with Ruby on Rails in a backend or fullstack capacity.
• Experience with event-driven architectures, database performance optimization, and caching strategies for high-throughput identity systems.
• Familiarity with cloud data compliance frameworks including biometric data retention regulations, PII handling, and audit logging requirements.
• Experience working in regulated industries such as government, healthcare, or financial services.
• Track record of improving engineering culture through documentation, technical standards, and developer experience improvements.

Responsibilities

• Architect & Lead Authentication Systems: Design and evolve scalable, secure, and resilient authentication experiences, including MFA, passkeys (FIDO2/WebAuthn), biometric flows, push notification authentication, and OAuth2/OIDC-based login systems that serve tens of millions of members daily at peak volume.
• Drive Verification Experience Excellence: Lead the technical design of end-to-end member-facing verification flows, including document-based identity proofing, face match, supervised verification, and trusted referee experiences — ensuring they meet NIST 800-63-3 IAL2/AAL2 standards with minimal friction.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a technical anchor for the team — setting the standard for code quality, system design, and engineering best practices. Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through code reviews, architectural guidance, and pairing.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Partner with Security, Platform, Identity Graph, Product, and Compliance teams to deliver cohesive features and integrations. Drive alignment on shared architectural decisions and multi-team initiatives that span authentication and identity verification.
• Reliability, Performance & Security: Own the availability and performance of authentication services at scale. Lead initiatives around observability, alert hygiene, capacity planning, and incident response for high-traffic, high-sensitivity systems.
• Compliance & Data Integrity: Champion compliance initiatives including data retention, compromised credential detection, biometric data governance, and privacy-preserving design patterns. Ensure authentication systems meet evolving legal and regulatory requirements.
• Roadmap Influence: Provide technical input into team roadmap planning. Identify engineering investments that improve developer velocity, system resilience, and member experience — and advocate for them with engineering leadership and product.

Benefits

• ID.me offers comprehensive medical, dental, vision, health savings account, flexible spending accounts (medical, limited purpose, dependent care, commuter benefit accounts), basic and voluntary life and AD&D insurance, 401(k) with company match, parental leave, ability to participate in unlimited paid time off subject to the terms and conditions of the PTO policy, including 8 company wide holidays, short and long-term disability insurance, accident and critical illness insurance, referral bonus policy, employee assistance program, pet insurance, travel assistant program, wellbeing and childcare discounts, benefit advocates, and a learning and development benefit.

What This Job Offers

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