Senior Software Development Engineer - Agent Identity & Core Primitives

Delinea; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Pension/retirement matching

Life insurance (comprehensive)

Employee assistance program

Time off plans

Paid company holidays

Job summary

Delinea is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design identity models for AI agents and build real-time authorization capabilities powering our AI security platform.

You will define interfaces, mentor teams, and influence policy technology choices, including Cedar, OPA, and OpenID Connect. You’ll collaborate with external platforms to establish trust and security at runtime.

Qualifications

• Typically 7 or more years of software engineering experience in security-focused roles.
• Deep expertise in identity, authorization, or distributed systems security.
• Hands-on experience building authorization or policy systems such as Cedar, OPA, OpenFGA.

Responsibilities

• Design the identity model for AI agents, including delegated actions and audit attribution.
• Build the real-time authorization engine and help select policy technology.
• Define trust for identities issued by external platforms (Microsoft Entra, Salesforce) and OpenID Connect for agents.
• Develop authorization and continuous-evaluation capabilities tied to live session signals.
• Own interfaces and contracts across the platform as it grows.
• Act as a technical leader across teams, guiding identity and authorization direction.

Skills

Identity security

Authorization systems

Distributed systems

Policy engines (OPA Cedar OpenFGA)

Tools

Cedar

OPA

OpenFGA

Job description

About Delinea:
Delinea is a pioneer in securing human and machine identities through intelligent, centralized authorization, empowering organizations to seamlessly govern their interactions across the modern enterprise. Leveraging AI-powered intelligence, Delinea's leading cloud-native Identity Security Platform applies context throughout the entire identity lifecycle - across cloud and traditional infrastructure, data, SaaS applications, and AI. It is the only platform that enables you to discover all identities - including workforce, IT administrator, developers, and machines - assign appropriate access levels, detect irregularities, and respond to threats in real-time. With deployment in weeks, not months, 90% fewer resources to manage than the nearest competitor, and a 99.995% uptime, Delinea delivers robust security and operational efficiency without compromise. Learn more about Delinea on Delinea.com, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube.

Join our passionate, global team at Delinea and help us make the world a safer and more secure place. Our success is driven by world-class product leadership, outstanding engineers, and strategic investment from TPG. We value diversity, innovation, and a culture of respect and fairness. If you're ready to push boundaries and challenge the status quo in security, we want to hear from you.

Summary:

AI agents break the assumptions traditional identity systems were built on: who is acting, on whose behalf, and with what authority. In this foundational role you will design and build the core identity and authorization building blocks that everything else in our AI security platform depends on, from how we model agent identity and delegated actions to how we decide what an agent can do at runtime. The interfaces you define set the technical direction for the teams building on top of you. This role will report directly into our Director of Engineering, Securing AI.

What You'll Do:

• Design the identity model for AI agents, including delegated (on-behalf-of) actions, composite identities, and how agent activity is attributed for audit.

• Build the authorization engine that decides in real time what an agent is allowed to do, and help select the underlying policy technology such as Cedar, OPA, or AuthZEN.

• Define how we establish trust in identities issued by outside platforms such as Microsoft Entra and Salesforce, and by emerging standards like OpenID Connect for agents.

• Build authorization and continuous-evaluation capabilities that draw on the live session and decision signals our identity products already produce.

• Own the interfaces and contracts the rest of the platform builds against, and keep them clean as the platform grows.

• Act as a technical leader across teams, setting direction and raising the bar on identity and authorization.

What You'll Need:

• Typically 7 or more years of software engineering experience, with deep expertise in identity, authorization, or distributed systems security.

• Hands-on experience building authorization or policy systems such as Cedar, OPA, OpenFGA, or a comparable engine.

• Working knowledge of identity and token standards such as OAuth, OpenID Connect, SPIFFE and SPIRE, or workload identity federation.

• A track record of designing systems and interfaces that other teams build on at scale.

• Ability to lead technical decisions that span multiple teams and communicate them clearly to varied audiences.

We'd Love to See:

• Experience securing AI or agentic systems.

• Contributions to identity, authorization, or security standards or open source.

• Background in privileged access, secrets management, or identity governance.

Why work at Delinea?

• We're passionate problem-solvers helping the world's largest organizations protect what matters most: their human and machine identities.

• We invest in people who are smart, self-motivated, and collaborative.

• What we offer in return is meaningful work, a culture of innovation and great career progression.

At Delinea, our core values are STRONG and guide our behaviors and success:

• Spirited - We bring energy and passion to everything we do

• Trust - We act with integrity and deliver on our commitments

• Respect - We listen, value different perspectives, and work as one team

• Ownership - We take initiative and follow through

• Nimble - We adapt quickly in a fast-changing environment

• Global - We embrace diverse people and ideas to drive better outcomes

We believe weaving these core values into our day-to-day actions, and our process for hiring, evaluating, and promoting employees, helps us cultivate a work environment that embraces collaboration and camaraderie.

We take care of our employees. We offer competitive salaries, a meaningful bonus program, and excellent benefits, including healthcare insurance, as well as pension/retirement matching, comprehensive life insurance, an employee assistance program, time off plans, and paid company holidays.

Delinea is an Equal Opportunity and Affinitive Action employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type with regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Upon conditional offer of employment, candidates are required to complete comprehensive criminal background check, verification of education, and verification of employment, per employment policy. In addition, all publicly posted social media sites may be reviewed.