Staff Backend IAM Engineer for AI Cloud Platform

Coupang; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Coupang is seeking an experienced Staff Engineer to lead backend engineering efforts focused on identity and access management for our next-generation AI cloud platform. You will guide the Identity team in building scalable authentication, authorization, and secure service-to-service communication across the platform.

This role drives modern IAM challenges, collaborates with global teams, and mentors engineers to foster ownership and excellence as Coupang scales its AI workloads.

Qualifications

• 10-12 years backend software engineering with 3+ years in engineering management.
• Strong backend development experience using Java or Python with REST API design.
• Hands-on experience with authentication and authorization technologies (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML).
• Solid understanding of identity systems including user identity and machine/workload identity.
• Experience with service-to-service authentication and distributed system security.
• Strong problem-solving and execution skills with ability to break down complex systems.
• Experience working in cloud environments (AWS preferred).
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a high-performing backend engineering team focused on identity and access management.
• Drive development of core IAM capabilities including authentication, authorization, and identity lifecycle management.
• Design and build scalable systems for user identity and machine identity management within a cloud environment.
• Work on modern authentication protocols such as OAuth2, OIDC, and SAML, and implement secure service-to-service authentication.
• Build and evolve authorization frameworks leveraging RBAC/ABAC models and policy engines (e.g., OPA).
• Partner with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, scalable infrastructure for AI workloads.
• Drive technical design, execution planning, and delivery of complex distributed systems.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and security of identity systems as the platform scales rapidly.
• Mentor engineers and foster a strong engineering culture focused on ownership and excellence.

Skills

Backend engineering

Java/Python

OAuth2/OIDC/SAML

AWS

Leadership/management

Tools

REST API design

Job description

Coupang is seeking an experienced Staff Engineer to lead backend engineering efforts focused on identity and access management for our next-generation AI cloud platform. You will guide the Identity team in building scalable authentication, authorization, and secure service-to-service communication across the platform.

This role drives modern IAM challenges, collaborates with global teams, and mentors engineers to foster ownership and excellence as Coupang scales its AI workloads.