Staff Engineer - Machine & Workload Identity

JS Careers; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

JS Careers in Sydney is seeking an experienced Staff Engineer to design and build secure machine and workload identity systems at enterprise scale. This hands-on role focuses on enabling secure service-to-service authentication across applications, APIs, cloud platforms and distributed workloads.

You will operate at the intersection of cyber security, identity, cloud and software engineering, guiding provisioning, authentication, rotation and governance of machine identities.

Qualifications

• Experience designing machine/workload identity systems.
• Strong knowledge of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect.
• Hands-on experience with Cloud IAM across AWS/Azure/GCP.
• Proven ability to integrate authentication across APIs, services and platforms.
• Experience provisioning, rotating and revoking identities.
• Production-grade development in Python or Go.
• Ability to design secure authentication architectures across layers.

Responsibilities

• Design and build machine and workload identity infrastructure at enterprise scale.
• Develop automated identity lifecycle processes including provisioning, rotation and revocation.
• Integrate authentication across cloud platforms, APIs, apps and service meshes.
• Develop production-grade tooling and prototypes using Python or Go.
• Solve complex authentication and identity issues in distributed environments.
• Make technical and architectural decisions within your domain.
• Review code and architecture and mentor other engineers.
• Help establish internal engineering standards for machine identity and authentication.

Skills

Machine identity infrastructure

OAuth & OIDC authentication

Cloud IAM (AWS/Azure/GCP)

API gateway authentication

Identity provisioning/rotation/revokal

Python or Go production development

Security architecture across cloud/app

Job description

We are looking for an experienced Staff Engineer specialising in Machine and Workload Identity to help design and build secure authentication systems operating at enterprise scale.

This is a highly technical, hands-on engineering role focused on enabling secure service-to-service authentication across applications, APIs, cloud platforms and distributed workloads.

You will work at the intersection of cyber security, identity, cloud and software engineering, helping shape how machine identities are provisioned, authenticated, rotated and governed across a complex enterprise environment.

You will be expected to design, build and ship production systems.

What You'll Do

• Design and build machine and workload identity infrastructure at enterprise scale.
• Build automated identity lifecycle processes covering provisioning, rotation and revocation.
• Integrate authentication across cloud platforms, APIs, application environments and service meshes.
• Develop production-grade tooling and prototypes using Python or Go.
• Solve complex authentication and identity issues across distributed environments.
• Make technical and architectural decisions within your domain.
• Review code and architecture and mentor other engineers.
• Help develop internal engineering standards around machine identity and authentication.
• Evaluate and introduce emerging identity technologies where they provide practical value.

What We're Looking For

• Machine identity or workload identity infrastructure.
• OAuth, OIDC and application authentication.
• Cloud IAM across AWS, Azure or GCP.
• API gateway authentication and integration.
• Identity provisioning, rotation and revocation.
• JWTs, cryptographic signing and identity protocols.
• Building and debugging authentication within distributed systems.
• Production software development using Python or Go.
• Designing secure authentication architecture across multiple identity layers.

Experience with one or more of the following would be particularly valuable:

• SPIFFE / SPIRE
• HashiCorp Vault
• API gateway security
• Workload identity federation
• Zero-trust architecture
• Open-source identity projects
• Large-scale identity lifecycle automation

Who This Role Will Suit

This opportunity would suit a senior or staff-level engineer coming from areas such as:

• Security Engineering
• Identity Engineering
• Cloud Security Engineering
• Infrastructure Security
• Application Security

You do not necessarily need to currently hold a Machine Identity title.

The key requirement is experience building secure authentication or identity systems and the engineering depth to operate across cloud, applications, APIs and distributed infrastructure.