Senior Staff Software Engineer, Identity

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

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Comprehensive healthcare benefits

Growth opportunities

Mental health and wellness resources

Financial assistance for hybrid work

Job summary

GoFundMe is searching for a Senior Staff Software Engineer for Identity Platform to drive the architecture, scalability, and reliability of our identity platform, impacting how millions trust and interact with us.

This hybrid role is based in San Francisco, requiring 3 days in the office. The ideal candidate has a strong background in identity protocols and security, with over 8 years in software engineering.

We offer competitive pay, comprehensive benefits, and a team-focused environment committed to positive social impact.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with leadership roles.
• Hands-on expertise with OAuth 2.x, OpenID Connect, SAML 2.0.
• Proficient in relational database design for high-availability environments.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve identity architecture spanning authentication.
• Own the consumer identity lifecycle and build identity resolution capabilities.
• Communicate architectural decisions to stakeholders.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Identity protocols expertise

Security instincts

Reliability skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Descope

Auth0

Okta

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Overview

GoFundMe is the world's most powerful community for good, dedicated to helping people help each other. By uniting individuals and nonprofits in one place, GoFundMe makes it easy and safe for people to ask for help and support causes, for themselves and each other. Together, our community has raised more than $40 billion since 2010.

Join us! GoFundMe is searching for a Senior Staff Software Engineer for Identity Platform to serve as the technical leader driving the architecture, scalability, and reliability of our identity platform, the foundational layer that every product team, enterprise customer, and internal service builds on. Your work will directly shape how millions of people trust and interact with GoFundMe, and how engineering teams across the company build identity-dependent features with confidence.

As a key technical leader, you will have the opportunity to define how consumer and enterprise identity converge into a unified, secure platform, driving impact for the company, the engineering organization, and the people we serve. Join us if you are excited to own a meaningful systems problem end-to-end while making a direct impact on trust, personalization, and the causes that matter most.

This is a hybrid role that requires 3 days per week at the office, and we are therefore only able to consider candidates who are located or willing to relocate to San Francisco, CA.

The Job

• Define and evolve the end-to-end identity architecture spanning authentication, authorization, session management, and token lifecycle across consumer and enterprise contexts.
• Establish trust boundaries, integration contracts, and platform primitives that make the secure path the default path for every team consuming identity services.
• Make principled build-vs-integrate decisions across vendor (Descope, Auth0, Okta) and in-house systems, owning the tradeoffs and migration paths.
• Design repeatable, self-service enterprise identity onboarding (SSO, SCIM provisioning, multi-tenant trust) so that each new partnership does not require bespoke integration.
• Architect federation and provisioning patterns that support GoFundMe’s growing enterprise and nonprofit partnerships.
• Own the consumer identity lifecycle including account continuity, progressive trust, confidence scoring, and anonymous-to-authenticated transitions.
• Build identity resolution capabilities (visitor stitching, account linking, confidence-weighted models) that power personalization and fraud prevention.
• Own the identity platform technical roadmap, prioritizing initiatives based on user impact, enterprise requirements, compliance obligations, and technical feasibility.
• Set integration standards and publish platform APIs and SDKs that enable product engineering teams to consume identity correctly without absorbing auth complexity.
• Mentor engineers across the Identity team and the broader Platform Tribe; raise the bar on system design, security thinking, and operational rigor.
• Contribute to system reliability through on-call participation, incident response leadership, and postmortem-driven improvements to identity infrastructure.
• Communicate architecture decisions, tradeoffs, and roadmap progress clearly to engineering leadership, product partners, and cross-functional stakeholders.

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.
• Track record of designing and shipping identity or auth platforms that other engineering teams depend on in production.
• Experience architecting systems using federation standards, session/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.
• Proficiency in relational database design and data modeling for identity systems, including schema evolution strategies for high-availability environments.
• Demonstrated ability to lead projects from ambiguity through delivery, balancing technical depth with business context and keeping teams aligned across organizational boundaries.
• 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, or policy engines such as OPA/Cedar.
• 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.

EEO and Additional Information

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, pay may vary depending on location, 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].

Privacy and Other Notices

Global Data Privacy Notice For Job Candidates And Applicants. Depending on your location, GDPR or certain US privacy laws may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required.

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. Our annual “Year in Help” report reflects our community’s impact in advancing our mission of helping people help each other. For recent company news and announcements, visit our Newsroom.