Staff Software Engineer (Authentication)

Pindrop

13h•$150,000 - $200,000•Remote

About The Position

As a Staff Software Engineer on Pindrop’s Authentication team, you will set technical direction for the cloud services and infrastructure behind Passport and guide its continued migration to the cloud platform. You will lead complex, multi-quarter initiatives to improve the reliability, scalability, performance, and security of Authentication systems. This is an individual contributor role with broad technical influence and no direct people-management responsibility. You will work with engineering leaders and partners in software engineering, test engineering, research, and product to shape architecture, address systemic risks, and develop durable solutions. The work spans defining technical strategy for cloud services, leading initiatives from problem framing through implementation and operational follow-through, establishing cloud-native patterns across AWS and GCP, and making tradeoffs involving reliability, scale, latency, security, cost, and time to market. You will also contribute to incident response, operational improvements, technical reviews, and the growth of other engineers through mentorship and collaboration. The role participates in an on-call rotation, including helping cover after-hours alerts as distributed support coverage expands. Pindrop is a cybersecurity company that provides continuous identity verification across voice, video, and digital interactions. Its trust platform helps enterprises detect synthetic identities, identify risk and fraud signals, and authenticate identities using voice, device, behavioral, and other signals. The company serves enterprises including financial institutions, insurers, and healthcare organizations. The role is remote-first, with regular team on-sites, company-wide events, and other in-person gatherings. The US base pay range is $150,000–$200,000, with compensation factors including responsibilities, experience, education, skills, and market and business considerations.

Requirements

At least 8 years of professional software development experience building backend services and APIs, or equivalent practical depth.
Demonstrated Staff-level impact leading significant technical initiatives across multiple services or domains and delivering measurable outcomes.
Strong hands-on experience with Go, Python, or similar languages, and a deep foundation in data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and Linux-based development.
Deep experience designing and operating cloud-native systems in AWS or GCP, including managed services such as S3, DynamoDB, Kinesis, and IAM.
Proven ownership of highly available systems, including deployment, monitoring, troubleshooting, incident response, and operational improvement, using CI/CD, Docker, and Kubernetes.
Experience defining or influencing technical standards, architecture, or roadmaps across team boundaries.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including documenting decisions and building alignment among stakeholders with different priorities.

Nice To Haves

Experience with backend data stores and messaging technologies such as Redis, MySQL, RabbitMQ, and Elasticsearch.
Experience in authentication, identity, fraud prevention, or other security-sensitive product environments.
Strong observability practices across metrics, logs, and traces, with a track record of using them for production diagnostics.
Experience leading large-scale migrations, reliability programs, or cost and capacity optimization efforts.
Experience designing internal platforms, developer tooling, or reusable engineering patterns adopted by multiple teams.
Exposure to UI work or adjacent product experiences that connect backend systems to customer-facing workflows.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve the technical strategy and architectural direction for Passport cloud services across multiple subsystems and workflows.
Lead complex, high-impact initiatives from problem framing and design through implementation, rollout, and operational follow-through, using Go and Python.
Set technical standards and reusable patterns for cloud-native services across AWS and GCP, including services such as Kinesis, DynamoDB, and S3, with a focus on reliability, scale, and secure production operation.
Make and communicate tradeoffs involving reliability, scalability, latency, security, cost, and time to market.
Anticipate systemic risks, identify architectural gaps, and drive mitigation before they affect customers, delivery velocity, or operational stability.
Partner with software engineering, test engineering, research, and product teams to align roadmaps and deliver new capabilities.
Lead technical reviews and facilitate alignment on complex design decisions, migration strategies, and ownership boundaries.
Participate in critical-system incident response and turn operational learnings into improvements in alerting, runbooks, deployment quality, and service ownership, using observability tooling to reduce ticket volume.
Mentor engineers and raise team effectiveness through code reviews, technical guidance, and hands-on collaboration.
Participate in the team's on-call rotation, including helping cover after-hours alerts as distributed support coverage expands.

Benefits

Competitive compensation package, including RSUs for all employees.
Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO).
Health and welfare plans, including one employer-paid employee-only plan.
Employer contribution to a Health Savings Account (HSA).
Vision and dental plans for employees and their families.
Paid parental leave for birth, adoptive, and foster parents.
One year of diaper delivery for a new addition to the family.
Recurring monthly phone and internet allowance.
Enhanced fertility and GLP-1 benefits.
Annual Learning & Development stipend for professional growth, skill-building, certifications, and continued education.