Senior Software Engineer (Auth & Identity)

Clear Fracture; Vienna (VA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Growth and development opportunities

Work-life balance

Dynamic team environment

Job summary

Clear Fracture, based in Vienna, Virginia, is searching for a Senior Software Engineer focused on designing and implementing authorization and identity systems within their platform. Candidates should have over four years of experience in backend software engineering with a deep understanding of authorization models and secure system design. This role requires collaboration with other engineers and the ability to solve complex security issues in production code. Clear Fracture emphasizes employee growth and work-life balance.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in authorization, identity, or authentication systems.
• Comfortable working in a collaborative engineering environment.
• Familiarity with threat modeling and secure system design.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement fine-grained authorization systems within the product.
• Write production-level backend code for authorization enforcement.
• Implement authentication flows and integrate with identity providers.
• Design tenant-aware access control across application services.

Skills

Backend software engineering experience (Python, Go, Java)

RBAC, ABAC, policy-based access control models

OAuth2, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SAML

Designing APIs

Implementing authentication flows

Experience with distributed systems

Cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Strong communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Job description

Clear Fracture is inventing a new class of AI-driven data integration platforms, enabling organizations to securely connect and operationalize data across complex environments. Our platform uses multi-agent systems to automate data integration, analysis, and operational workflows for mission-critical government and enterprise applications.

We are seeking a backend-focused Senior Software Engineer to design and build the authorization and identity systems embedded directly within our product. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on implementing fine-grained access control, authentication flows, and tenant-aware security mechanisms across our platform. You won’t just be managing an identity provider; you’ll be designing and coding the high-performance authorization middleware and SDKs that allow autonomous agents to navigate sensitive data pipelines securely. If you enjoy solving complex distributed systems problems where ‘standard’ cloud-based solutions don’t work, this is your role.

You will work closely with backend, platform, and DevOps engineers to integrate authorization into core application workflows, APIs, and agent systems. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy building security-critical systems in production code, not just configuring or operating infrastructure.

Note: This is not a DevOps or infrastructure security role. It focuses on building application-layer authorization and identity systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Authorization Systems: Design and implement fine-grained authorization systems within the product, including role-based and policy-based access control models for users, organizations, APIs, and agent workflows.
• Application Integration: Write production-level backend code to enforce authorization across APIs, services, and agent execution paths. Partner with other engineers to embed access control directly into core product functionality.
• Identity & Authentication: Implement authentication flows and integrate with enterprise identity providers (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, Active Directory), ensuring seamless and secure user and service authentication.
• Multi-Tenant Design: Design and enforce tenant-aware access control and isolation across application services, data layers, and compute workloads.
• Security Architecture (Application Layer): Contribute to the design of authorization and identity architecture, including policy models, enforcement patterns, and system boundaries.
• Secure System Design: Participate in threat modeling and design reviews, with a focus on authorization boundaries, privilege escalation risks, and least-privilege enforcement.
• Agentic Security: Define and monitor operational constraints to mitigate the risk of prompt injection or goal misalignment.
• Distributed Systems Integration: Design authorization approaches that function reliably across distributed systems, including cloud-connected and air-gapped environments.
• Developer Experience: Create clear abstractions, APIs, and documentation that make it easy for other engineers to correctly implement and extend authorization logic.

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience building authorization, identity, or authentication systems in application code.
• Strong backend software engineering experience (e.g., Python, Go, Java), including:
  • Designing APIs
  • Implementing authentication flows
  • Enforcing authorization in service logic
• Deep understanding of:
  • RBAC, ABAC, and/or policy-based access control models
  • OAuth2, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SAML, and enterprise SSO
• Experience designing or implementing fine-grained permissions in complex or distributed systems.
• Experience working on multi-tenant applications or systems with strong isolation requirements.
• Familiarity with threat modeling and secure system design, especially around access control and trust boundaries.
• Comfortable working in a collaborative engineering environment and integrating security into shared codebases.
• Experience building or deploying systems in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Strong communication skills and ability to explain technical concepts clearly.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• Due to the nature of the work, U.S. Citizenship and the ability to obtain a Secret Clearance are required.

Desired Qualifications (Plus Factors)

• Experience building or integrating authorization frameworks or policy engines (e.g., OPA, Cedar, Zanzibar-inspired systems).
• Experience designing authorization for dynamic systems (e.g., agent-based systems, workflow engines, or plugin architectures).
• Experience implementing relationship-based or context-aware access control models.
• Experience supporting on-prem or air-gapped deployments.
• Experience with enterprise identity integrations in complex environments.
• Experience working in high-assurance or regulated environments.
• Familiarity with secrets management tools (e.g., Vault).
• Exposure to compliance frameworks (SOC2, FedRAMP, etc.).
• Advanced degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Active security clearance.

Why Clear Fracture?

• Be part of a dynamic and rapidly growing team at the forefront of AI and data integration.
• Build core authorization systems for a next-generation AI platform.
• Work on technically challenging problems at the intersection of distributed systems, security, and agentic workflows.
• Have direct ownership over how access control is designed and implemented across the platform.
• Collaborate with a highly technical team building complex, high-impact systems.

This is an ideal opportunity to be part of inventing a whole new class of software products. At Clear Fracture, we are driven by wanting to remove friction from data handling and analysis, and we thrive vicariously through our customer’s success. We know that our employees play the largest role in our continual success. That is why we foster an environment of growth and development, with an emphasis on opportunity, recognition, and work-life balance. We give the same high level of commitment to our employees that we give to our clients. If Clear Fracture sounds like the place where you want to be, we'd enjoy speaking with you.