VP of Engineering

1Kosmos•Edison, NJ

About The Position

1Kosmos is seeking a builder-first engineering leader who stays close to the code and enjoys diving into technical challenges, understanding system internals, and driving execution from the front lines through active participation in architectural design, code reviews, and hands-on problem-solving. This role involves working in a cloud-agnostic microservices environment, gaining deep context on existing systems, and actively driving execution, performance, security, and system evolution. The ideal candidate will have an "always sleeveless" mindset, ready to tackle any technical task. At 1Kosmos, we are transforming how organizations verify and authenticate workers, customers, and citizens with our unified platform that combines identity verification and passwordless authentication into a single distributed identity cloud service. We are FedRAMP High Authorized and certified to the highest industry standards. As a Series B company experiencing rapid growth, we are building critical fraud detection capabilities to protect our customers and their users from evolving identity threats.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience with recent, hands-on engineering leadership (Director / VP level in high-growth B2B SaaS).
Core Microservices Stack: Deep, practical experience in Node.js (90% of our stack) alongside Java or GoLang.
Cloud & Infrastructure: Hands-on mastery of containerized, cloud-agnostic environments (Kubernetes, AWS).
Applied Agentic Experience: Demonstrated experience building and operationalizing autonomous agents and agentic workflows (experience with AWS Bedrock is a huge plus).
Security-First Mindset: Deep appreciation for platform security, identity management, compliance, and secure software development practices.
Leadership Style: Proven track record of both building 0-to-1 systems and taking ownership of mature, inherited codebases.

Nice To Haves

Experience with AWS Bedrock is a huge plus.

Responsibilities

Lead from the Front: Manage, mentor, and elevate a mid-sized engineering team while remaining deeply technical and hands-on in code, system design, and infrastructure.
Master Existing Architecture First: Take full ownership of existing architectures. Deeply understand the why behind our current design decisions before making tactical shifts or introducing new paradigms.
Build Real Agentic Systems: Work hands-on with our agentic stack (AWS Bedrock / Python / Node), going far beyond basic LLM prompts or chatbots. Optimize agent workflows, orchestration, reliability, and security.
Drive Performance & Security: Maintain a relentless focus on low latency, high throughput, platform resilience, and enterprise security across our cloud-agnostic microservices topology.
Own Delivery & Reliability: Partner with product and QA leads to ensure clean, reliable, and zero-downtime deployments.
Foster a Zero-Ego Culture: Build a collaborative environment where ownership is non-negotiable, and execution speaks louder than slides.