Senior Staff Software Engineer (Identity & Access Management)

GoFundMe; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 233,500 - 321,200; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Comprehensive healthcare

401(k) saving program

Job summary

GoFundMe is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer for Identity & Access Management to own the IAM platform that serves consumer and enterprise surfaces. You will shape authentication, authorization, and provisioning patterns, balancing security with usability across front doors.

You will lead architectural decisions for federation, SSO, MFA, and policy enforcement, while mentoring teammates and coordinating with Risk, Payments, Security, and Integrity stakeholders to enable trusted access at

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering, with senior to principal level on platform or infrastructure systems.
• Deep identity protocols: OAuth 2.x, OpenID Connect, SAML 2.0, SCIM.
• Designed IAM or auth platforms used by multiple teams in production at scale.
• Enterprise identity at scale: SSO, SCIM provisioning, multi-tenant trust, IdP heterogeneity.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve end-to-end IAM architecture across authentication, authorization, session management, and token lifecycle.
• Own enterprise identity onboarding for nonprofit customers: SSO, SCIM provisioning, multi-tenant trust patterns.
• Architect federation and provisioning patterns (OIDC, SAML 2.0, SCIM) for diverse IdP configurations.
• Make build-vs-integrate decisions across Descope, Auth0, Okta and in-house systems.
• Design and operate MFA orchestration and step-up authentication flows with risk signals.
• Own the consumer identity platform (Descope CIAM, session management, passwordless, social login).
• Establish policy enforcement architecture (PEP, PAP) and runtime enforcement across surfaces.
• Own the IAM technical roadmap and collaborate with stakeholders across the company.
• Partner with Identity & Risk Intelligence, Payments, Security, Integrity teams as the IAM interface.
• Mentor engineers across Identity team and Platform Tribe.

Skills

IAM architecture

OAuth 2.0 / OIDC

Federation & provisioning

Security & risk

Observability

Mentoring

Cloud platforms

Tools

Descope

Auth0

Okta

Ping Identity

Job description

Senior Staff Software Engineer (Identity & Access Management)

GoFundMe is the world's most powerful community for good. Our community has raised more than $40 billion since 2010, connecting millions of donors, beneficiaries, and nonprofit partners on a single platform built for trust.

GoFundMe is hiring a Senior Staff Software Engineer, Identity & Access Management to lead the architecture, evolution, and reliability of our IAM platform: the foundational layer that every product team, enterprise partner, and internal service builds on. You will set the technical direction for how millions of people authenticate, how nonprofit partners federate into GoFundMe, and how engineering teams consume identity with confidence.

GoFundMe has more than one front door. Donors, organizers, and beneficiaries arrive through our consumer platform; nonprofits and their supporters, from grassroots organizations to some of the largest charitable institutions in the world, arrive through Pro. Keeping every front door open to the right people is an access problem, and this role owns the platform behind all of them, spanning consumer IAM and enterprise IAM: federation and provisioning, MFA orchestration and step‑up, session and token lifecycle, and policy enforcement as a platform.

You will be one of three horizontal Identity Platform Engineers reporting to the Sr. Manager of Identity and Integrity Engineering, alongside an Identity & Risk Intelligence engineer and a Policy and Data engineer, partnering with stakeholders across the company to identify needs and build the access platform every surface consumes. The Identity & Risk Intelligence role owns knowing who someone is and how much to trust them; you own access: federation, provisioning, and policy enforcement. If you think in trust boundaries, federation patterns, and policy enforcement more than signals and scoring, this is your seat.

The job

• Define and evolve the end‑to‑end IAM architecture spanning authentication, authorization, session management, and token lifecycle across consumer and enterprise contexts. Establish the trust boundaries, integration contracts, and platform primitives that make the secure path the default for every team consuming identity services.
• Own the enterprise identity onboarding experience for our nonprofit customers: repeatable, self‑service SSO, SCIM provisioning, and multi‑tenant trust patterns that scale without bespoke integration per partner.
• Architect federation and provisioning patterns (OIDC, SAML 2.0, SCIM) that hold up across a wide range of enterprise IdP configurations, from large institutions to small grassroots organizations.
• Make principled build versus integrate decisions across vendor platforms (Descope, Auth0, Okta) and in‑house systems, owning the trade‑offs, migration paths, and long‑term cost of change.
• Design and operate MFA orchestration and step‑up authentication flows, integrating risk signals from the Identity & Risk Intelligence engineer to make adaptive, confident auth decisions without adding unnecessary friction for the legitimate majority.
• Own the consumer identity platform, including Descope CIAM, session management, passwordless authentication, and social login, balancing security against funnel conversion with a lean toward the enterprise and Pro surfaces where IAM complexity is highest.
• Establish policy enforcement architecture (PEP and PAP) and the contracts by which authorization decisions are reliably enforced at runtime across consumer and enterprise surfaces.
• Own the IAM technical roadmap, prioritizing initiatives based on user impact, enterprise requirements, compliance obligations, and technical feasibility.
• Partner with Identity & Risk Intelligence, Payments, Security, and Integrity as the IAM platform interface for the systems that depend on it.
• Mentor engineers across the Identity team and the broader Platform Tribe, raising the bar on system design, security thinking, and operational rigor.

You

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time at senior, staff, or principal levels working on platform or infrastructure systems.
• Deep, hands‑on expertise with identity protocols and standards: OAuth 2.x, OpenID Connect, SAML 2.0, and SCIM. You can architect against these, not just integrate.
• Track record of designing and shipping IAM or auth platforms that other engineering teams depend on in production at meaningful scale.
• Demonstrated experience with enterprise identity at scale: SSO, SCIM provisioning, multi‑tenant trust, IdP heterogeneity, and B2B platforms with a long tail of customer IdP configurations.
• Experience architecting systems using federation standards, session and token management patterns, and well‑defined trust boundaries, with an eye toward minimizing the cost of future change.
• Strong security instincts: you threat‑model as you design, understand credential risk and account takeover patterns, and build systems where the secure path is the easy path.
• Strong observability and reliability skills: experience with monitoring, alerting, and incident response for mission‑critical identity infrastructure.

Preferred

• Hands‑on experience with commercial identity platforms (Descope, Auth0, Okta, Ping, or comparable) in production, including migration between providers.
• Experience spanning both enterprise and consumer identity contexts, such as at fintech, SaaS, payments, or identity‑forward companies.
• Familiarity with advanced authorization models (RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC) and policy engines (OPA, Cedar), particularly the enforcement side.
• Experience with compliance and audit requirements relevant to identity systems (SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR, CCPA) and data residency considerations.
• Practical experience deploying and operating identity services on cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) at scale.
• Contributions to identity standards bodies, open‑source identity projects, or published thought leadership in the IAM space.

Why you’ll love it here

• Make an Impact: Be part of a mission‑driven organization making a positive difference in millions of lives every year.
• Innovative Environment: Work with a diverse, passionate, and talented team in a fast‑paced, forward‑thinking atmosphere.
• Collaborative Team: Join a fun and collaborative team that works hard and celebrates success together.
• Competitive Benefits: Enjoy competitive pay and comprehensive healthcare benefits.
• Holistic Support: Enjoy financial assistance for things like hybrid work, family planning, along with generous parental leave, flexible time‑off policies, and mental health and wellness resources to support your overall well‑being.
• Growth Opportunities: Participate in learning, development, and recognition programs to help you thrive and grow.
• Commitment to DEI: Contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion through ongoing initiatives and employee resource groups.
• Community Engagement: Make a difference through our volunteering program.

We live by our core values: impatient to be great, find a way, earn trust every day, fueled by purpose. Be a part of something bigger with us!

GoFundMe is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that actively pursues candidates of diverse backgrounds and experiences. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, nationality or national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, marital status, age, medical condition, mental or physical disability, or military or veteran status.

The annual U.S. salary range for this full‑time position is $233,500 – $321,200. The company also offers equity and other benefits to employees, including healthcare, dental, vision, life insurance and 401(k) saving program. In addition to this wage, there are geolocation differentials that will increase pay depending on the work location. Additionally pay may vary depending on other factors including skills, experience, education, or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific total compensation package based on your location during the hiring process.

If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete a job application or a job interview or to otherwise participate in the hiring process, please contact us at [e-mail].

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Learn more about GoFundMe:
We’re proud to partner with GoFundMe.org, an independent public charity, to extend the reach and impact of our generous community, while helping drive critical social change. You can learn more about GoFundMe.org’s activities and impact in their FY ’25 annual report.