Engineering Manager, Identity & Access Platform

Circle; Sacramento (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Circle is seeking a hands-on engineering manager to lead the identity and access platform, focusing on authentication, authorization, and agent identity at scale. You will own the technical direction, mentor engineers, and partner with Security, Product, Onboarding, and Risk to ship reliable capabilities.

You will design and review code, write design docs, and stay close to production systems, ensuring security and auditability across token flows, OAuth/OIDC, SSO, and non-human identities.

Qualifications

• 3+ years people management of software engineers, incl. hiring and performance
• Experience designing identity, authentication, authorization at scale
• Strong understanding of enterprise identity standards and policy engines

Responsibilities

• Own technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for Circle’s identity platform
• Lead backend and frontend engineers; guide design reviews and incident response
• Collaborate with security, product, risk, and onboarding teams to align with governance

Skills

Identity systems

Authentication

Authorization

OIDC & SAML

MFA & passkeys

Agent identity

Leadership

Security practices

Java/Kotlin

TypeScript

Tools

Okta

Auth0

OPA

Cedar

SPIFFE/SPIRE

Workload identity

Kubernetes

Job description

Circle (NYSE: CRCL) is one of the world’s leading internet financial platform companies, building the foundation of a more open, global economy through digital assets, payment applications, and programmable blockchain infrastructure. Circle’s platform includes the world’s largest regulated stablecoin network anchored by USDC, Circle Payments Network for global money movement, and Arc, an enterprise-grade blockchain designed to become the Economic OS for the internet. Enterprises, financial institutions, and developers use Circle to power trusted, internet-scale financial innovation. We have built a flexible work environment where new ideas are encouraged and everyone is a stakeholder.We build the platform behind customer identity and access for Circle Hub, Circle Mint, Custody, the Cross-Chain Payments Network, and the Developer Console. Our systems handle sign-up and sign-in, sessions and API credentials, service-to-service authentication, enterprise SSO, organizations and workspaces, user and role management, and the Policy Engine that governs approvals and access for money movement across products.The next chapter is extending those capabilities to AI agents. Agents will need identities of their own, carefully bounded authority, short-lived credentials, and audit trails that connect every action back to the person or organization responsible for it.This is a product and platform engineering team—not an IT access-administration function. The systems we build sit at the intersection of customer experience, security, reliability, and financial risk.We are looking for a hands-on engineering manager who has built identity or authorization systems at scale and can lead a team through significant platform change. You will set the technical direction for authentication, authorization, customer and emerging agent identity capabilities. You will manage and grow a team, partner closely with Security and product teams, and stay close to the work through design reviews, code reviews, debugging, incident response, and occasional implementation with a strong AI focus. You will work closely with the team’s Staff Engineer and Team Lead, and help the broader organization understand how identity works at Circle.Own the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for Circle’s identity and access platform.Manage, coach, and grow a team of backend and frontend engineers. Set clear expectations, give direct feedback, develop senior engineers into technical leaders, and hire well.Partner with Security, Product, Onboarding, Risk, and product engineering teams that integrate with identity.Improve the team’s engineering practices, operational readiness, and ability to provide reliable platform capabilities to the rest of Circle.You have at least three years of experience managing software engineers, including hiring, performance management, coaching, and developing senior individual contributors. You have substantial hands-on experience building identity, authentication, authorization, or access-control systems at scale. x and OIDC, SAML and enterprise SSO, session and token design, API credentials, service or workload identity, MFA and passkeys, or policy and entitlement engines.You stay close to production systems, read code and designs critically, and can help debug a difficult authentication or authorization issue. Recently, you have designed, prototyped, reviewed, or shipped production code.You understand that security monitoring requires more than tracking errors and latency.You write design documents people can use, explain complex systems plainly, and give leadership a direct answer with a recommendation attached.Direct experience with Okta, Auth0, or an equivalent customer identity platform, including hosted-versus-custom architecture decisions, organization-level policies, or extensibility mechanisms.Experience with AI agent identity, delegated authorization, workload identity, service identity, or other non-human identity systems.A clear point of view on agent registration and lifecycle, delegation chains, least privilege, token scoping, revocation, auditability, and how to preserve accountability when an agent acts on behalf of a person or organization.Experience building or operating systems where software agents or automated services can take consequential actions under bounded authority.Familiarity with relevant identity and authorization patterns, including on-behalf-of token exchange, MCP authorization, SPIFFE/SPIRE, workload identity federation, agent registries, or policy engines such as OPA or Cedar.Experience with Java or Kotlin backend systems and modern TypeScript frontend applications.Circle is on a mission to create an inclusive financial future, with transparency at our core. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, or any other protected status required by the laws in the locations where we hire. Additionally, Circle participates in the
E-Verify Program
in certain locations, as required by law.Should you require accommodations or assistance in our interview process because of a disability, please reach out to
-Remote