Senior Software Engineer, PKI & Cryptographic Systems

United States Digital Space LLC; United States; Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

the company in Austin, TX is hiring a Senior Software Engineer for PKI infrastructure. You will design and build core PKI systems, manage certificate lifecycles, and scale cryptographic operations across a global platform.

You will own the cryptographic core, integrate with HSMs, and automate issuance/renewal pipelines while maintaining meticulous audit trails and compliance with CA/B and WebTrust guidelines.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in production systems software with a strong ops record.
• Deep knowledge of applied cryptography and PKI.
• Familiarity with HSMs and PKCS#11.
• Strong systems programming in Go, Rust, or C/C++.
• Distributed, high-integrity systems experience.
• Experience designing database schemas (PostgreSQL).
• Security-first mindset with threat modelling.
• Comfort working on high-consequence systems.
• Bonus: CA, Boulder, or large-scale PKI exposure.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core PKI systems and certificate workflows.
• Own cryptographic core, including key lifecycle and HSM integration.
• Automate issuance/renewal pipelines and revocation at scale.
• Provide audit trails, CT integration, and tamper-evident logs.
• Maintain compliance with CA/B Forum and root programs.
• Represent the company in the WebPKI community and reports.
• Contribute to post-quantum migrations and secure upgrades.
• Own end-to-end code quality, observability, and runbooks.
• Collaborate with SSL/TLS product, infra, and security teams.
• Mentor engineers and raise engineering standards.

Skills

Production systems

Applied cryptography

PKI

HSM integration

Go/C/C++/Rust

Distributed systems

PostgreSQL

Threat modeling

Secure design

High-consequence work

Tools

PKCS#11

ACME

PostgreSQL

Job description

About Us

At the company, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. the company protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by the company all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. the company was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

At the company, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.

Available Locations: Austin, London, or Lisbon (Hybrid)

About the role

TLS is the connective tissue of the Internet, and the company terminates a large fraction of it. Every day our network handles tens of millions of certificate operations across products like Universal SSL, SSL for SaaS, Origin CA, the company Access, and the company Tunnel — and the WebPKI ecosystem underneath all of it is undergoing its largest structural change in a generation: shorter certificate lifetimes, a shift toward post-quantum-safe signature algorithms, and new automation and trust-establishment mechanisms on the horizon.

We are investing in the next generation of the company’s PKI and cryptographic infrastructure to keep up with, and stay ahead of, that shift. As a Senior Software Engineer on this team, you will design and build the systems that manage certificate lifecycles, protect and use private keys at scale, integrate with hardware security modules, automate issuance and renewal, and take the company’s cryptographic stack into the post-quantum era. You will work at the intersection of applied cryptography, distributed systems, and security engineering — on infrastructure that a large fraction of the Internet quietly depends on.

This is an early-days role on a growing team. The design decisions you make in the first year will shape how the company’s certificate and key infrastructure operates for years to come.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core PKI systems— certificate lifecycle management, X.509 issuance and validation logic, key parameter enforcement, and policy engines aligned with industry standards including CA/Browser Forum guidance and browser root program policies.

• Own the cryptographic core.Integrate with FIPS 140-2 Level 3 (and, where required, Level 4) HSMs via PKCS#11 and vendor-native SDKs; build key ceremony and key-lifecycle tooling; enforce strict key-usage boundaries in code.

• Automate at scale.Build and evolve ACME-based issuance and renewal pipelines, short-lived certificate rotation, and revocation mechanisms that serve at the company’s global scale.

• Instrument transparency and audit trails.Integrate with Certificate Transparency, build append-only tamper-evident logging, and design evidence pipelines that hold up to rigorous third-party audit.

• Maintain accreditation and respond to a changing compliance landscape.PKI operations must maintain compliance under CA/B Forum, WebTrust, and root store program frameworks. You will be aware of, and adapt to, changes in relevant policies, participate in public incident disclosure and discourse, and participate in regular third-party audits.

• Represent the company in the WebPKI community.Write public CA incident reports and serve as a primary contact with the WebPKI community; clear technical writing is core to this role.

• Ship the post-quantum future.Contribute to the company’s ongoing post-quantum migration — including work on post-quantum encryption and authentication — so that the company’s cryptographic infrastructure stays ahead of the transition.

• Own code end-to-endfrom design through production incident response. Cryptographic infrastructure cannot silently fail; you will build the observability, runbooks, and on-call posture that keep the service inside SLO.

• Partner across the org— with the SSL/TLS product teams, the HSM and data-centre infrastructure teams, the company Research applied cryptography group, and adjacent product teams that consume PKI as a platform.

• Raise the bar.Mentor other engineers joining an early-stage team, run design reviews, and establish the engineering standards, threat models, and secure-development practices this team will operate under for years.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• 5+ years of production systems software experience,with a strong operational track record — you have carried a pager for something people depend on.

• Deep working knowledge of applied cryptography and PKI.X.509, ASN.1/DER, RFC 5280, CRL distribution, Certificate Transparency, ACME, and the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements. You do not need to be a cryptographer, but you need to reason precisely about certificate profiles, key parameters, and issuance policy.

• Familiarity with HSMs.PKCS#11 integration, key ceremonies, key-attestation flows, and understanding of what FIPS 140-2/3 validation actually means in production.

• Strong systems programming backgroundin at least one of Go, Rust, or C/C++.

• Distributed systems fluency— you have built or operated globally replicated, availability-critical services with strict correctness guarantees.

• Experience designing and operating database schemas for high-integrity systems(Postgres or equivalent).

• Security-hardened system design instincts— threat modelling, defence in depth, least privilege, and secure key handling.

• Comfort with high-consequence work.A mis-issued or mis-revoked certificate is a public, industry-visible event. You need the temperament to move quickly and the discipline to be careful.

Bonus Points

• Direct experience working on or with a publicly-trusted or private CA, or a large-scale internal PKI (Let’s Encrypt / Boulder, Google Trust Services, DigiCert, Sectigo, ISRG, Entrust, Microsoft PKI, HashiCorp Vault PKI, step-ca, CFSSL, or an internal CA at scale).

• Experience withcrypto/x509, BoringSSL, OpenSSL/AWS