Lead Software Engineer - Identity Platform Services

Leadout Capital; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Leadout Capital is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for Trailblazer Identity, a tier-1 B2C identity platform serving 10 million users and 30+ Salesforce experiences. This highly technical individual contributor role requires architectural judgment, mentoring, and influence across teams while staying close to code.

You will lead architecture and delivery of secure, scalable backend platform services, collaborating with product, security, and other tech

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software development experience building and operating large-scale production systems.
• Experience leading the architecture and delivery of complex distributed systems or backend platforms.
• Strong hands-on software engineering skills closely aligned with implementation.
• Architectural judgment to evaluate trade-offs across scalability, reliability, security, and performance.
• Ability to influence technical direction beyond the immediate team and drive alignment.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of large-scale, secure backend platform services.
• Provide technical leadership for services supporting Trailblazer Identity and ecosystem.
• Translate product requirements into technical architectures and implementation strategies.
• Evaluate alternatives and articulate trade-offs related to scale, reliability, and security.
• Remain hands-on and contribute to design, implementation, and code reviews.
• Drive technical decisions across multiple teams and partners.
• Design APIs and distributed systems for high-scale customer experiences.
• Establish engineering best practices for testing, observability, and CI/CD.

Skills

Leadership

Architectural judgment

Hands-on coding

Mentoring

Communication

Education

BS in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

AWS

Serverless

REST API design

Distributed systems

Job description

We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for Trailblazer Identity (TBID), a tier-1 B2C identity platform supporting more than 10 million users and 30+ Salesforce digital experiences and partner properties.

This is a highly technical individual contributor role for an engineer who combines deep hands-on engineering experience with strong architectural judgment, technical leadership, and the ability to influence across teams.

About the Role

You will be part of the Platform Services team within Digital Marketing Technology and will provide technical leadership for the services that power Trailblazer Identity.
You will work across multiple engineering teams and partner closely with Product, Architecture, Security, and other technology organizations to design and evolve secure, scalable, highly available identity and platform services.

This role requires someone who can move comfortably between architecture and implementation: defining technical direction, evaluating trade-offs, solving complex engineering problems, mentoring engineers, and remaining close enough to the code to lead by example.

Success in this role requires more than designing strong systems. You will be expected to influence technical decisions across teams, navigate ambiguity and disagreement, drive alignment with stakeholders, and raise the engineering bar for the broader platform.

What You'll Do

• Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of large-scale, secure, and resilient backend platform services.
• Provide technical leadership for services supporting Salesforce's Trailblazer Identity platform and broader digital ecosystem.
• Translate ambiguous product and business requirements into clear technical architectures and implementation strategies.
• Evaluate architectural alternatives and clearly articulate trade-offs related to scale, reliability, security, performance, operability, and development velocity.
• Remain hands-on with engineering and contribute directly to the design, implementation, review, and evolution of production systems.
• Drive technical decisions and alignment across multiple engineering teams, architects, product partners, and dependent organizations.
• Lead the design of APIs, distributed systems, data flows, and event-driven architectures supporting high-scale customer-facing experiences.
• Establish and champion engineering best practices across system design, testing, observability, operational readiness, security, CI/CD, and software quality.
• Identify technical risks early and drive pragmatic solutions across teams.
• Mentor and coach engineers while helping improve technical decision-making and engineering effectiveness across the organization.
• Use data, prototypes, and technical evidence to influence architectural decisions and resolve technical disagreement.
• Evaluate and adopt AI-assisted engineering tools and practices that improve developer productivity, software quality, and delivery velocity.

What We're Looking For

We are looking for an experienced technical leader who has demonstrated the ability to operate at Lead Engineer level in complex, production-scale environments.
You should have:

• 8+ years of professional software development experience building and operating large-scale production systems.
• Demonstrated experience leading the architecture and delivery of complex distributed systems or backend platforms.
• Strong hands-on software engineering skills and the ability to remain technically close to implementation.
• Strong architectural judgment, including the ability to evaluate alternatives, explain trade-offs, and make decisions across scalability, availability, reliability, security, performance, and operational complexity.
• Experience influencing technical direction beyond your immediate team and driving alignment across multiple engineering teams and stakeholders.
• Experience leading complex initiatives from architecture through implementation, testing, production readiness, and ongoing operation.
• Strong experience with microservices, API design, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures.
• Strong experience with AWS and modern cloud architectures, including serverless and event-driven patterns.
• Experience designing and operating highly available customer-facing services.
• Strong understanding of application and web security principles.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex technical decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and raise engineering standards across a team.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools and workflows to improve engineering productivity and software delivery.

Technical Experience

Strong experience in the following areas is important for success in this role:

• TypeScript and JavaScript
• Node.js and modern backend application development
• AWS cloud services and serverless architectures
• RESTful API design
• Distributed systems and microservices
• NoSQL and relational data stores
• Event-driven architectures and messaging systems
• Infrastructure as code
• Automated testing and test-driven engineering practices
• Observability, monitoring, and operational readiness
• Web and application security

Experience with technologies such as API Gateway, Lambda, SNS, SQS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, AppSync, Kafka, Kinesis, Terraform, Jest, and Playwright is highly relevant.

Identity & Security Experience

Experience building or operating consumer identity platforms is strongly valued.
Relevant experience may include:

• B2C identity platforms such as Okta or Auth0
• OAuth 2.0
• OpenID Connect
• JWT lifecycle management
• Authentication and authorization patterns
• Identity federation
• Secure API design
• CORS, CSP, XSS prevention, and related web security practices

Technical Leadership Expectations

At Lead Engineer level, we expect you to:

• Independently drive architecture for complex systems rather than rely on others to define the technical direction.
• Ask the right questions before designing a solution and establish clear functional and non-functional requirements.
• Explain not only what you would build, but why - including alternatives considered and trade-offs made.
• Lead technical discussions through ambiguity and disagreement.
• Influence engineers and stakeholders across organizational boundaries.
• Balance long-term architecture with pragmatic delivery.
• Identify risks, challenge assumptions, and use technical evidence to drive decisions.
• Take ownership for outcomes, not only implementation.
• Improve the effectiveness of the engineers and teams around you.
• Communicate technical ideas with clarity, structure, and appropriate depth.

Why Join the Team

You will have the opportunity to provide technical leadership for a critical Salesforce identity platform supporting more than 10 million users and 30+ digital experiences and partner properties, including experiences across the broader Trailblazer ecosystem.

You will work on complex challenges involving identity, distributed systems, scalability, reliability, security, and platform evolution while partnering across multiple engineering teams and organizations.
This is an opportunity to have significant technical influence on a highly visible platform while remaining a hands-on engineer.