Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Authentication Platform

Leadout Capital; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Salesforce is seeking an Authentication Platform Engineering Manager to lead a team that builds core identity services powering our production IAM stack. You will guide Kerberos, LDAP, SAML, OIDC, and WebAuthn/FIDO2 initiatives and work across AWS/GCP environments for scalable, secure access.

You will coach engineers to design robust systems, integrate AI-assisted development responsibly, and drive architecture reviews to protect security and performance.

Qualifications

• 13+ years in software engineering or related field.
• 3–5 years leading teams in infrastructure-centric environments.
• Experience with Kerberos, SAML, OIDC, LDAP.
• Public cloud or hybrid with high availability requirements.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy and execution for the Authentication Platform.
• Provide technical leadership across Kerberos, LDAP, WebAuthn/FIDO2, TOTP.
• Ensure high availability and reliability of core identity services.
• Coach engineers in architecture and AI-assisted development.
• Enforce security best practices and architectural integrity.

Skills

Software engineering

Team leadership

Identity platforms

Kerberos SSO

SAML OIDC LDAP

AWS/GCP

Java Go C#

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

AI tooling

Architecture review

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

CI/CD

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Job description

Location: Bellevue, WA

The Experience

The Authentication Platform Engineering Manager leads the team responsible for the core identity services that power Salesforce's production infrastructure, including Kerberos-based authentication, Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP), and Fast Identity Online 2 (FIDO2) systems. This role sits at the heart of our Production Identity and Access Management (IAM) stack, ensuring every access request across our global fleet is secure, authenticated, and resilient. You will manage a team of specialists who bridge legacy infrastructure protocols and modern, cloud-native identity standards to defend against sophisticated threats.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

• Drive the strategy and execution for the Authentication Platform, ensuring these foundational services scale horizontally across diverse environments.
• Provide technical leadership across a diverse protocol stack, from Kerberos and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to modern WebAuthn/FIDO2 and TOTP implementations.
• Guarantee the reliability of services that are foundational dependencies for the entire company, targeting high availability standards.
• Partner with security architects to implement Zero Trust principles, ensuring the platform enforces strict adherence to least privilege and robust identity verification.
• Develop each engineer's ability to work effectively in an AI-augmented environment, moving beyond tracking output to actively coaching growth into higher-level system design and architecture work.
• Own how AI tools are integrated into the team's daily development cycle, including configuration, feedback loops, and the judgment calls about when human review is required to validate output.
• Serve as the guardian of architectural integrity, security best practices, and technical standards as AI increases code volume, coaching engineers to critically audit AI-generated code for logic flaws, vulnerabilities, and performance issues.

You're Our Person If...

• You have 13+ years of software engineering experience, including 3-5 years leading teams in high-pressure, infrastructure-centric environments.
• You have proven expertise in Kerberos and identity protocols such as Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), OpenID Connect (OIDC), and LDAP.
• You have experience managing systems with massive throughput and high-availability requirements in public cloud (AWS/GCP) or hybrid environments.
• You're familiar with Java, Go, or C#, and have experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes) and modern continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
• You have active, hands‑on proficiency with AI development tools; full utilization is the baseline expectation, along with deep technical expertise sufficient to evaluate architectural integrity and make informed decisions about AI-generated output.
• You have experience assessing candidates on their ability to formulate effective prompts, evaluate AI outputs, and orchestrate multi-agent workflows in addition to foundational technical skills.

Even Better If...

• You have experience building or maintaining enterprise-grade Identity Providers (IdP) or Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) platforms.
• You understand hardware security modules (HSMs), public key infrastructure (PKI), and secure credential storage.
• You have knowledge of how authentication systems meet Payment Card Industry (PCI), SOC2, or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements.
• You have experience managing on-call rotations for high-visibility production services, and a track record of hiring and growing senior engineering talent.