Senior Software Engineer, Identity

United States Digital Space LLC; San Francisco, Washington (CA, District of Columbia); On-site; USD 216,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking an Identity Engineer to design and implement core identity systems, focusing on authentication, authorization, and governance across enterprise environments. The role provides exposure to leading AI and distributed systems in a high-scale setting.

You will work on SSO, MFA, and federated identity solutions, plus ReBAC/RBAC/ABAC models, with a strong emphasis on policy compliance and security standards. Strong collaboration and ownership are essential.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of full-time engineering experience in infrastructure and identity systems.
• Experience with IAM controls; Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi).
• Hands-on experience with OpenFGA, Authzed, Cedar, Topaz, or similar authorization frameworks at scale.
• Knowledge of Zanzibar-based ReBAC models and access control evaluation.
• Knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, JWT; IdP solutions like EntraID, Okta.
• Extensive experience in distributed systems and public cloud platforms (AWS preferred).
• Track record of independent ownership of successful engineering projects.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; translate complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement identity infrastructure to ensure secure authentication and authorization across enterprise systems.
• Develop authentication mechanisms including SSO, MFA, and federated identity (SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect).
• Develop authorization mechanisms (ReBAC, ABAC, RBAC).
• Create identity governance policies to meet security policies and regulations (NIST, SOC2, ISO 27001).
• Present technical information to teams and stakeholders and provide guidance on identity management.

Skills

5+ yrs exp

Distributed systems

Communication skills

Ownership

Mentorship

Tools

OpenFGA

Authzed

Cedar

Topaz

OAuth/OIDC/SAML/JWT

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Software is eating the world, but AI is eating software. We live in unprecedented times – AI has the potential to exponentially augment human intelligence. Every person will have a personal tutor, coach, assistant, personal shopper, travel guide, and therapist throughout life. As the world adjusts to this new reality, leading platform companies are scrambling to build LLMs at billion scale, while large enterprises figure out how to add it to their products. To make them safe, aligned and actually useful, these models need human eval and reinforcement learning through human feedback (RLHF) during pre-training, fine-tuning, and production evaluations. This is the main innovation that’s enabled ChatGPT to get such a large headstart among competition.

At Scale, our products include the Generative AI Data Engine, SGP, Donovan, and others that power the most advanced LLMs and generative models in the world through world-class RLHF, human data generation, model evaluation, safety, and alignment. The data we are producing is some of the most important work for how humanity will interact with AI.

At the foundation of these products is the Identity Engineering team. In this role, you will help support the design and development of core software systems specifically focused on identity, access management, authorization, and authentication. You’ll also get widespread exposure to the forefront of the AI race as Scale sees it in enterprises, startups, governments, and large tech companies.

You will:

• Drive the design, and implementation of our identity infrastructure to ensure secure authentication and authorization across enterprise systems.

• Build software for authentication mechanisms such as Single Sign-Out (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and federated identity solutions (SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect).

• Build software for authorization mechanisms such as Relation-based access control (ReBAC), Attribute-based access control (ABAC), Role-based access control (RBAC).

• Build software-defined identity governance policies to ensure compliance with security policies, industry regulations (e.g., NIST, SOC2, ISO 27001), and organizational standards.

• Present technical information to teams and stakeholders, providing guidance and insight on identity management and best practices.

Ideally you’d have:

• 5+ years of full-time engineering experience, post-graduation with specialities in infrastructure and identity systems.

• Infrastructure expertise –IAM controls, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi), microservice deployment best practices.

• Hands-on experience working with OpenFGA, Authzed, Cedar, Topaz, or similar authorization frameworks at scale.

• Strong understanding of Zanzibar-based ReBAC models, relationship tuples, and access control evaluation.

• Strong knowledge of authentication standards such as OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, and JWT, as well as industry standard IdP solutions like EntraID, Okta, etc.

• Extensive experience in software development and a deep understanding of distributed systems and public cloud platforms (AWS preferred).

• Show a track record of independent ownership of successful engineering projects.

• Possess excellent communication and collaboration skills, and the ability to translate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to haves:

• Experience securing API access and implementing access control mechanisms at the application level.

• Multi-cloud infrastructure experience –AWS, Azure, GCP, and more.

• Proficiency in integrating IAM solutions with applications built using frameworks such as Java, Python, Node.js, or .NET.

• Mentorship/leadership experience supporting junior engineers

*Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is:

$216,000-$270,000 USD

***PLEASE NOTE:Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

About Us:

*At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst& Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

*We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

*We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at [e-mail]. Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information.

*We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.

*PLEASE NOTE: We collect, retain and use personal data for our professional business purposes, including notifying you of job opportunities that may be of interest and sharing with our affiliates. We limit the personal data we collect to that which we believe is appropriate and necessary to manage applicants’ needs, provide our services, and comply with applicable laws. Any information we collect in connection with your application will be treated in accordance with our internal policies and programs designed to protect personal