Software Engineer, Agent Auth San Francisco

Vercel Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 196,000 - 294,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Healthcare

Mentorship & events

Flexible time off

WFH budget

Job summary

Vercel is hiring an engineer for the Agent Auth and Identity team to design and operate identity, authentication, and authorization systems for agents and people. You will work on scalable APIs, OAuth/OIDC flows, and secure, auditable access across Vercel products.

You will own end-to-end projects from design to production, collaborate widely across product and security teams, and contribute to open source efforts around agent identity and trust.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of backend design, build, and production operations experience.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript or a backend language; willingness to work in TypeScript.
• Solid understanding of authentication and authorization concepts (sessions, tokens, OAuth/OIDC).
• Security-minded approach, considering threat models and least privilege.
• End-to-end ownership from design through long-term production operation.
• Ability to reason about architectural tradeoffs and pragmatic delivery.
• Strong cross-team collaboration and alignment toward goals.
• Curiosity and comfort in fast-moving, evolving spaces.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate identity, authentication, and authorization systems for people and agents.
• Shape how agents prove who they are and receive scoped, time-bound access.
• Develop secure, scalable APIs and SDKs for developers and agents.
• Work with OAuth 2.x, OIDC, and agent-focused protocols and influence direction.
• Lead end-to-end projects, from opportunities to production improvements.
• Collaborate with product, security, and platform teams to strengthen identity across products.
• Participate in on-call rotations to ensure reliability of critical systems.
• Contribute to open source and broader agent identity conversations.
• Write clean, tested, well-documented code for long-term reuse.

Skills

Backend systems

TypeScript

JavaScript

Authentication & Authorization

Security-minded engineering

End-to-end ownership

Architectural tradeoffs

Cross-team collaboration

Job description

About Vercel:

Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company, freeing people and agents to ship what's next. For more than a decade we've helped builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.

Now we're scaling our products for both agents and people to ship and run software, built in the open and trusted by OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide.

About the role

Agents are becoming first-class users of the internet. They sign in, call APIs, deploy code, and act on behalf of people and teams. That raises questions the web was never designed to answer: Who is this agent? Who does it work for? What is it allowed to do, for how long, and how do we know?

As an engineer on the [Agent Auth and Identity] team, you'll help answer those questions. You'll build the systems that let agents and people authenticate, delegate access, and act safely across Vercel and the services our customers connect to. This is foundational work: identity and authorization sit underneath everything we ship, and getting them right for agents will shape how modern software gets built.

The scope is intentionally broad. You might spend one quarter designing how credentials are issued and scoped for autonomous agents, and the next building the developer-facing APIs and SDKs that make secure auth feel effortless. You'll own systems end-to-end, from design through long-term operation in production.

We're looking for engineers who care deeply about security and developer experience in equal measure, enjoy working on problems without established playbooks, and want to define how trust works in an agentic world.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and operate the identity, authentication, and authorization systems that power Vercel and our Customers for both people and agents.
• Shape how agents prove who they are, act on behalf of users and teams, and receive scoped, time-bound, auditable access.
• Build secure, scalable APIs, services, and SDKs that make auth simple for developers and their agents to adopt.
• Work with modern and emerging standards (such as OAuth 2.x, OIDC, and agent-focused protocols) and help influence where they go next.
• Lead projects end-to-end: identify opportunities, set technical direction, and deliver improvements in security, reliability, and developer experience.
• Partner closely with product, security, and platform teams across Vercel to make identity a strength of every product we ship.
• Participate in the on-call rotation, taking responsibility for the reliability of critical systems.
• Contribute to open source and the broader community conversation on agent identity and trust.
• Write clean, efficient, tested, and well-documented code that others can build upon confidently.

What you need

• [3+] years of experience designing, building, and operating backend systems in production at scale.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript, or a comparable backend language and the willingness to work primarily in TypeScript.
• Solid understanding of authentication and authorization concepts, such as sessions, tokens, OAuth/OIDC flows, permission models, and secrets management.
• A security-minded approach to engineering: you think about threat models, least privilege, and failure modes as part of design, not as an afterthought.
• A track record of end-to-end ownership, from design and implementation through to long-term operation.
• Ability to reason about architectural tradeoffs, balancing long-term vision with pragmatic delivery.
• Strong cross-team collaboration skills and the ability to drive alignment toward shared goals.
• Curiosity and comfort working in a fast-moving space where the right answers are still being figured out.

Bonus if you

• Have built or operated identity providers, auth platforms, or access-control systems used by other developers.
• Have experience with delegated authorization, workload identity, service-to-service auth, or machine credentials.
• Have worked on LLM-powered agents, tool calling, or protocols like MCP.
• Have experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Are familiar with React or Next.js.
• Have contributed to open-source projects or standards bodies.

Benefits & Compensation

• Competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Inclusive Healthcare Package.
• Learn and Grow: we provide mentorship and send you to events that help you build your network and skills.
• Flexible Time Off.
• We will provide you the gear you need to do your role, and a WFH budget for you to outfit your space as needed.

The base pay range for this role is $196,000 – $294,000. Actual salary will be based on job-related skills, experience, and location. The total compensation package may include benefits, equity-based compensation, and eligibility for a company bonus or variable pay program depending on the role.

Disclosures:

• Privacy: Please review our Job Applicant Privacy Policy for more information on how we handle your data.
• Equal Opportunity: Vercel is committed to fostering and empowering an inclusive community within our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Vercel encourages everyone to apply for our available positions, even if they don't necessarily check every box on the job description.