Lead Software Engineer, Platform Authentication

Docusign; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 179,000 - 263,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full health benefits

Retirement plans

Learning & development

Paid time off

Parental leave

RSUs / stock options

Job summary

Docusign’s Platform Authentication team seeks a Lead Software Engineer to define and deliver the next generation of authentication infrastructure. You’ll lead backend services for login, SSO, OAuth, token services, and session management, working on highly available, security‑sensitive distributed systems used worldwide.

You will guide technical design, influence partner teams, and raise quality, security, and operational maturity of the platform in a hybrid work setting.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience designing, building, and operating production backend services and distributed systems.
• Experience with authentication and identity systems (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML).
• Experience leading technical decisions and cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and operation of secure, scalable authentication and identity services.
• Own significant technical initiatives from problem definition to launch and operation.
• Build highly available APIs and distributed services for authentication and authorization workflows.
• Collaborate with product management, security, and infrastructure to define requirements and deliver reliable solutions.
• Establish and evolve engineering practices for security, availability, observability, and incident response.
• Mentor engineers and review designs and code to grow the authentication engineering community.

Skills

Backend architecture

Java

C#

Go

TypeScript/Node.js

OAuth 2.0 / OIDC

Security best practices

Distributed systems

Job description

Company Overview

Docusign brings agreements to life. More than 1.8 million customers and more than a billion people in over 180 countries use Docusign solutions to accelerate the process of doing business and simplify people’s lives. With intelligent agreement management, Docusign unleashes business-critical data that is trapped inside of documents. Until now, these were disconnected from business systems of record, costing businesses time, money, and opportunity. Using the Docusign AI-native IAM platform, companies can create, commit, and manage agreements with solutions created by the #1 company in e-signature and contract lifecycle management (CLM).

What you’ll do

Docusign’s Platform Authentication team builds the identity and authentication capabilities that enable secure, reliable access across Docusign products and services. As a Lead Software Engineer, you will help define and deliver the next generation of authentication infrastructure, including login, single sign-on, OAuth, token services, session management, and other identity platform capabilities. You will work on highly available, security-sensitive distributed systems used by customers and internal teams around the world. This role is ideal for an engineer who combines strong backend engineering skills with practical industry experience in authentication and identity. You will lead technical design and delivery for complex initiatives, influence partner teams, and raise the quality, security, and operational maturity of the platform.

Responsibility

• Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and operation of secure, scalable authentication and identity services


• Own significant technical initiatives from problem definition and design through implementation, launch, and ongoing operation


• Build highly available APIs and distributed services that support authentication, authorization, token issuance, federation, session management, and identity lifecycle workflows


• Apply authentication and authorization standards appropriately to real-world product and platform requirements


• Partner with Product Management, Security, Infrastructure, and application engineering teams to define requirements, evaluate tradeoffs, and deliver reliable solutions


• Establish and evolve engineering practices for security, availability, observability, testing, and incident response


• Investigate complex production issues, lead root-cause analysis, and drive durable improvements to prevent recurrence


• Review designs and code, provide technical mentorship, and help grow the authentication engineering community


• Communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders, influence decisions, and build alignment across teams


• Contribute to an inclusive, collaborative culture focused on customer trust, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement

Job Designation

Hybrid: Employee divides their time between in-office and remote work. Access to an office location is required. (Frequency: Minimum 2 days per week; may vary by team but will be weekly in-office expectation)

Positions at Docusign are assigned a job designation of either In Office, Hybrid or Remote and are specific to the role/job. Preferred job designations are not guaranteed when changing positions within Docusign. Docusign reserves the right to change a position's job designation depending on business needs and as permitted by local law.

What you bring

Basic

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent practical experience


• Experience designing, building, and operating production backend services and distributed systems


• Experience programming in one or more modern languages such as Java, C#, Go, or TypeScript/Node.js


• Experience building or integrating authentication and identity systems


• Experience with core authentication and authorization concepts and protocols, including:OAuth 2.0/OAuth 2.1 concepts and flows, including authorization code with PKCE, client credentials, refresh tokens, scopes, consent, and token lifetime managementOpenID Connect (OIDC), including ID tokens, claims, discovery, nonce/state validation, and JWKS/key rotationSAML 2.0, including service-provider and identity-provider concepts, assertions, metadata, certificates, and single sign-onJWTs, signing and verification, key management, token validation, and common implementation risks


• Experience applying secure-by-design practices, threat modeling, and defense against common authentication vulnerabilities


• Experience designing RESTful APIs and integrating with internal or external identity providers


• Experience leading technical decisions, simplify complex systems, and deliver outcomes across team boundaries

Preferred

• Experience with large-scale, multi-region, highly available identity or security platforms


• Experience with WebAuthn, FIDO2, passkeys, MFA, adaptive authentication, or risk-based access controls


• Experience with OAuth 2.0 extensions or related patterns such as JWT bearer assertions, certificate-based client authentication, or token exchange


• Experience operating services with strong reliability, latency, and security requirements


• Experience with MSF services and service decomposition, including breaking larger services into smaller, well-bounded services with clear interfaces, ownership, and migration plans


• Familiarity with containers, orchestration, cloud platforms, CI/CD, and infrastructure automation


• Experience with observability platforms for metrics, logs, tracing, security events, and auditability


• Experience working with privacy, compliance, or enterprise security requirements


• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of mentoring engineers and influencing architecture

Wage Transparency

Pay for this position is based on a number of factors including geographic location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Based on applicable legislation, the below details pay ranges in the following locations:

Washington: $178,900.00 - $262,825.00 base salary

This Role Is Also Eligible For The Following

• Bonus: Sales personnel are eligible for variable incentive pay dependent on their achievement of pre-established sales goals. Non-Sales roles are eligible for a company bonus plan, which is calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.


• Stock: This role is eligible to receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Benefits

• Paid Time Off: earned time off, as well as paid company holidays based on region


• Paid Parental Leave: take up to six months off with your child after birth, adoption or foster care placement


• Full Health Benefits Plans: options for 100% employer paid and minimum employee contribution health plans from day one of employment


• Retirement Plans: select retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions


• Learning and Development: options for coaching, online courses and education reimbursements


• Compassionate Care Leave: paid time off following the loss of a loved one and other life-changing events

Life at Docusign

Docusign is committed to building trust and making the world more agreeable for our employees, customers and the communities in which we live and work. You can count on us to listen, be honest, and try our best to do what’s right, every day. At Docusign, everything is equal.

Working here

We each have a responsibility to ensure every team member has an equal opportunity to succeed, to be heard, to exchange ideas openly, to build lasting relationships, and to do the work of their life. Best of all, you will be able to feel deep pride in the work you do, because your contribution helps us make the world better than we found it. And for that, you’ll be loved by us, our customers, and the world in which we live.

Accommodation

Docusign is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need such an accommodation, or a religious accommodation, during the application process, please contact us at [e-mail].

If you experience any issues, concerns, or technical difficulties during the application process please get in touch with our Talent organization at [e-mail] for assistance.

States Not Eligible for Employment

This position is not eligible for employment in the following states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Equal Opportunity Employer

It's important to us that we build a talented team that is as diverse as our customers and where all employees feel a deep sense of belonging and thrive. We encourage great talent who bring a range of perspectives to apply for our open positions. Docusign is an Equal Opportunity Employer and makes hiring decisions based on experience, skill, aptitude and a can-do approach. We will not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, color, age, sex, religion, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, physical or mental disability, registered domestic partner status, caregiver status, marital status, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected category.