Identity & Access Platform Engineering Lead

Circle; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 195,000 - 237,000; Full time

Job summary

Circle is seeking an engineering manager to lead the identity and access platform, focusing on authentication, authorization, and agent identity capabilities. You will manage a team of backend and frontend engineers, collaborate with Security and Product, and drive architectural decisions to support secure, scalable access control.

You will stay close to production systems, design, prototype, and ship critical components, ensuring clear communication of trade-offs and roadmaps to stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Three years of experience managing software engineers.
• Deep identity or authorization experience at scale.
• Strong architectural judgment in complex systems.
• Hands-on technical contributions and code review experience.
• Security-minded operating model for identity systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• Lead technical designs, review critical code paths, and debug production issues.
• Partner with Security, Product, Onboarding, Risk, and product engineering teams.
• Turn competing requests into a sequenced roadmap with clear trade-offs.
• Run delivery processes including planning, migrations, cutovers, and status reporting.
• Improve engineering practices and operational readiness for reliable platform capabilities.

Skills

People management

Identity systems

Architectural design

Security mindset

Clear communication

Hands-on coding

Tools

Okta/Auth0

Job description

Circle is seeking an engineering manager to lead the identity and access platform, focusing on authentication, authorization, and agent identity capabilities. You will manage a team of backend and frontend engineers, collaborate with Security and Product, and drive architectural decisions to support secure, scalable access control.

You will stay close to production systems, design, prototype, and ship critical components, ensuring clear communication of trade-offs and roadmaps to stakeholders.