Senior Software Engineer – Authentication & Authorization - RTP

Socket.dev; Raleigh (NC); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

VAST Data is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to build high-performance authentication and authorization for a large-scale storage system. You will design systems to decide access on the critical path, balancing latency, correctness, and scalability on Linux with C/C++. Own features end-to-end and tackle production issues at scale.

You will work on authentication/authorization services, integrate with AAA, and optimize for low latency and high throughput in enterprise AI deployments.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering experience with modern C/C++.
• Experience building production systems in distributed/storage/infrastructure.
• Ownership of production systems from design to maintenance.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement authentication and authorization services in C/C++.
• Integrate with external AAA services and their wire protocols.
• Build low-latency, highly scalable authorization paths for distributed storage workloads.
• Own features from requirements and design through implementation, testing, rollout, and production support.
• Debug complex production issues using traces, metrics, and logs.
• Improve observability, reliability, and maintainability of the system.
• Work directly on problems encountered by enterprise customers and AI infrastructure deployments.

Skills

C/C++ programming

Distributed systems

Performance analysis

Debugging

System ownership

Education

Tools

Linux

Wire protocols

Observability tooling

Job description

VAST Data is looking to add a Senior Software Engineer - Authentication & Authorization to our growing team! This is a unique opportunity to join one of the fastest-growing infrastructure companies in history - at the heart of the AI revolution. "VAST's data management vision is the future of the market." - Forbes

At VAST, we're building the data platform for the AI era - software infrastructure that powers the capture, refinement, protection, and activation of massive datasets across data center, edge, and cloud. Our platform is redefining what's possible in high-performance, scalable data systems, and we're just getting started.

About the Role:

We are looking for an experienced Software Engineer to build high-performance authentication and authorization services for a large-scale distributed storage system. You'll design and implement systems that make authorization decisions on the critical path of storage requests, balancing low latency, correctness, and scalability while integrating efficiently with external AAA services. This is a systems engineering role. You'll work in modern C/C++ on Linux, own features end-to-end, and solve production problems that only emerge at scale. The systems you build will handle demanding enterprise workloads where correctness, observability, and performance are equally important. If you enjoy understanding systems deeply, debugging complex production behavior, and taking ownership of critical infrastructure, you'll fit well on this team.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement authentication and authorization services in C/C++
• Integrate efficiently with external AAA services and their wire protocols
• Build low-latency, highly scalable authorization paths for distributed storage workloads
• Own features from requirements and design through implementation, testing, rollout, and production support
• Debug complex production issues using traces, metrics, and logs
• Optimize performance, scalability, and resource utilization under realistic workloads
• Improve the observability, reliability, and maintainability of the system
• Work directly on problems encountered by enterprise customers and AI infrastructure deployments

What You Won't Be Doing

• Building features that never reach production
• Working on isolated prototypes with little customer impact
• Spending your time in unnecessary meetings instead of engineering

Responsibilities

• Make sound technical decisions around access control APIs, external AAA integration, caching strategies, correctness, performance, and operability
• Own significant areas of the codebase and drive their technical direction
• Turn ambiguous requirements into well-designed, production-ready solutions
• Maintain a high engineering bar for code quality, testing, and operational excellence
• Write software that remains reliable under concurrency, retries, failover, and large-scale production workloads
• Improve the simplicity, observability, and maintainability of the system over time

Requirements

• Strong software engineering experience with modern C/C++
• Experience building production systems in one or more of the following areas: Distributed systems, Storage systems, Networking or TCP/IP, Infrastructure software
• Strong understanding of concurrency, synchronization, failure handling, and long-running services
• Comfortable working close to operating system, storage, and networking boundaries
• Demonstrated ownership of production systems from design through long-term maintenance
• Strong debugging and performance analysis skills
• Passion for building reliable infrastructure software that operates at scale