Staff Software Engineer - Wallet/Authentication Platform
About The Position
ID.me is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Wallet/Authentication Platform team. This team builds and operates the core sign-in, registration, MFA, and account management infrastructure used by over 140 million members. Authentication is critical as it's the first interaction members have with ID.me. The platform handles sign-in, registration, MFA, account recovery, password reset, and MyWallet, enabling verified identity across various government agencies, healthcare organizations, and consumer brands. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will define the technical direction for the authentication platform, lead cross-team architectural decisions, and act as a force multiplier for the team. You will leverage your expertise in identity, security, and distributed systems to elevate the team's performance and shape how millions of people manage their digital identities.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
- 8+ years of professional software development experience, with demonstrated impact at a senior or staff level.
- 5+ years of experience in backend services engineering, with strong proficiency in Java and Spring Boot.
- 1+ years experience with AI-assisted development tooling (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) with at least one year of daily use, and a demonstrated commitment to an AI-first engineering culture.
Nice To Haves
- Deep expertise in authentication and identity protocols: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SAML 2.0, FIDO2/WebAuthn, and related standards.
- Proven ability to lead large-scale technical initiatives from design through production, including driving alignment across multiple teams and stakeholders.
- Experience designing, building, or operating an Identity Provider (IdP) or Identity and Access Management (IAM) platform at scale.
- Familiarity with government identity and security frameworks: NIST SP 800-63 (IAL/AAL), FedRAMP, or Kantara Initiative accreditation requirements.
- Experience with federation, SSO, and enterprise identity integration patterns (e.g., SCIM, XACML, LDAP/Active Directory).
- Strong background in auth security engineering: threat modeling, credential attack mitigation, account takeover prevention, rate limiting, and session security.
- Experience with React or modern frontend frameworks in the context of authentication UX.
- Track record of mentoring senior engineers and driving meaningful improvements to engineering culture and practices.
- Startup or high-growth company experience with a strong bias toward ownership and execution.
Responsibilities
- Define and drive the technical roadmap for authentication platform services, identifying systemic challenges, architectural risks, and strategic opportunities.
- Author architecture proposals, lead design reviews, and own critical technical decisions across the team.
- Partner with Platform, Security, Identity, Product, and adjacent engineering teams to align on authentication standards, shared infrastructure, and cross-cutting concerns.
- Represent the team's technical perspective in org-level planning and architectural forums.
- Lead end-to-end design and implementation of complex, high-impact authentication features — sign-in flows, MFA, federation, account lifecycle management — balancing security, scale, and developer ergonomics.
- Define the team's approach to auth security: threat modeling, credential protection, session management, abuse mitigation, and real-time risk signal integration.
- Champion security as a first-class engineering discipline across every feature the team ships.
- Set the standard for code quality, testing, observability, and incident response.
- Drive technical debt reduction and platform reliability improvements.
- Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through code reviews, design critiques, and pairing.
- Model and champion AI-first engineering practices — leveraging tools like Claude Code and Cursor to accelerate design, implementation, and review cycles — and help the broader team adopt these workflows effectively.
Benefits
- 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
- 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
- Learning and development benefit
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
Associate degree
