Software Engineer - Infrastructure Security

WorkOS; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k matching

Equity

Healthcare coverage

FSA and Disability

Fertility benefits

Paid time off

Parental leave

Gym stipend

Wellness stipend

Commuter benefits

Unlimited tokens

Job summary

WorkOS in San Francisco is seeking a Security Platform Engineer to join the Infrastructure Security team. You will build workload identity infrastructure, enable identity-based authentication across internal services, and drive adoption of secure platform capabilities across teams.

You will replace static secrets with short-lived credentials, unify authorization policies, and ship developer-friendly primitives that scale with our growth, emphasizing reliability and developer experience.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in software engineering with security-focused platform or infrastructure experience.
• Strong knowledge of secrets management, fine-grained authorization, and workload identity.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and authentication/authorization tech like JWTs, X.509, PKI, SPIFFE/SPIRE, OPA.
• Experience building and operating production infra used by multiple teams, with focus on availability.
• Proven ability to drive cross-team adoption of platform capabilities or migrations.

Responsibilities

• Build workload identity infrastructure and short-lived credentials for runtimes.
• Bring identity-based authentication to internal services and drive migration to secure paths.
• Eliminate static secrets and implement identity-authenticated proxies and abstractions.
• Unify authorization through a centralized interface and policy framework.

Skills

Platform building

Service-to-service auth

Systems thinking

Migration/adoption

Engineering collaboration

AI/Automation

Curiosity & humility

Tools

Kubernetes

PKI

SPIFFE/SPIRE

OPA

JWTs / X.509

Job description

About WorkOS

WorkOS builds modern developer tools and APIs that make it easy for companies to become Enterprise Ready. Our platform powers authentication, identity, authorization, and other critical infrastructure that developers need to securely scale their products to large organizations.

WorkOS builds modern developer tools and APIs that make it easy for companies to become Enterprise Ready. Our platform powers authentication, identity, authorization, and other critical infrastructure that developers need to securely scale their products to large organizations.

We recently raised a $100M Series C, valuing the company at $2B, led by Meritech and Sapphire with participation from Greenoaks, Craft, Abstract, and Audacious. WorkOS powers enterprise features for many of the fastest-growing AI companies, including OpenAI, Cursor, and Perplexity, Sierra, and Plaid.

As AI reshapes software, WorkOS is at the frontier of Human and Agent Authentication, Identity, and Access Control helping companies answer a new critical question: who are your agents, and what are they allowed to do? Our fast-growing customer base includes hundreds of modern software companies building the next generation of enterprise-ready products.

About The Security Platform Team

The Infrastructure Security team provides and supports the primitives that enable engineering to securely build applications and meet compliance obligations, while abstracting away the underlying complexity for the best possible developer experience.

Our work centers on workload identity and authorization: how internal applications authenticate to each other and to the services they depend on, and how that access is granted and enforced. We're replacing static secrets with short-lived identity credentials, bringing identity-based authentication to the services engineers use every day, and unifying how authorization is managed across the company.

We're a platform engineering team with a security mission. We measure success by the security outcomes we enable and by how much engineers enjoy building on what we ship — the secure path should be the easiest path.

Who we're looking for

• A platform builder. You love building infrastructure that other engineers rely on every day, and you sweat the developer experience details that make adoption effortless.
• Fluent in service-to-service auth. You know authentication and authorization deeply: JWTs, X.509 certificates, and when to reach for each.
• A systems thinker. You reason carefully about bootstrapping, circular dependencies, availability, and failure modes, especially for infrastructure that everything else depends on.
• A pragmatic migrator. You know that shipping the primitive is half the job. You can drive adoption across many teams, meet them where they are, and retire the legacy path.
• A strong partner to engineering. You build trust with engineers by understanding their priorities and making security frictionless.
• Excited about AI. You're embracing AI and automation to scale platform work and reduce toil.
• Curious and humble. You ask the basic questions, enjoy untangling complex systems, and bring others along with you.

Responsibilities

• Build workload identity infrastructure. Make short-lived identity credentials a default part of every application's runtime environment, in partnership with application platform owners.
• Bring identity-based authentication to internal services. Work with the owners of major internal dependencies to support identity certificates, make them the golden path for newly onboarding applications, and drive migration of existing ones.
• Eliminate static secrets. Replace all static passwords and service tokens with short-lived identity credentials, and build identity-authenticated egress proxies and API abstractions that inject and automatically rotate managed secrets for the external dependencies that still require them.
• Unify authorization. Build a single interface and framework through which authorization policies are centrally managed and enforced.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on security-related platform, infrastructure, or distributed systems.
• Strong working knowledge of secrets management, fine-grained authorization, and workload identity systems.
• Familiarity with the Kubernetes ecosystem and authentication/authorization technologies such as JWTs, X.509 certificates, PKI, cert-manager, SPIFFE/SPIRE, and OPA.
• Experience building and operating production infrastructure that other teams depend on, with attention to availability and failure modes.
• Proven ability to drive cross-team adoption of platform capabilities or lead large-scale migrations.

Benefits and Perks (US Only)

At WorkOS, we offer resources that emphasize personal and familial well-being. We offer healthcare coverage for you and your family, including medical, dental, and vision. We offer parental leave, paid-time off and fully remote working arrangements.

• 401k matching
• Competitive Equity
• Healthcare, dental and vision coverage
• FSA, ST/LT Disability, Voluntary Life
• Carrot fertility benefits
• 20 days paid vacation + 10 holidays + unlimited sick leave
• 12 weeks fully paid parental leave
• Fitness: Monthly stipend for gyms, yoga classes, race registrations or whatever keeps you active
• Wellness: Monthly stipend for a massage, meditations class, therapy, or activities that enhance your well-being
• Commuter benefits for hybrid employees in SF/NYC
• Unlimited token usage!

Please inquire directly with our recruiting team for benefits available to those working outside the US.

Equal Opportunity Employer

WorkOS is an equal opportunity employer, committed to diversity and inclusiveness. We will consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, nationality, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability or age.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

Compensation Range: $175K - $275K