Staff Software Development Engineer - SDM

delinea; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Bonus program

Pension matching

Life insurance

Employee assistance program

Paid time off

Job summary

Delinea is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to shape the technical direction of StrongDM’s platform as part of our identity and access management family. You will work across distributed systems, security, and cloud architecture to guide high-scale Go services and cryptographic components, reporting to the engineering manager.

You will lead architecture decisions, review code, and mentor engineers while collaborating with product, architecture, and DevOps leaders to deliver secure, scalable

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer with deep Go and distributed systems expertise.
• Strong architecture experience for highly concurrent distributed systems and Go networking/cryptography libraries.
• Knowledge of API design (gRPC/Protobuf and REST) and cloud deployment (AWS).

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and technical direction of concurrent backend systems in Go.
• Drive design decisions for proxy data plane and control-plane services.
• Partner with architects, product managers, and DevOps/SRE leadership to shape roadmaps.
• Serve as SME on secure network protocols and cryptographic systems (TLS/mTLS, key management).
• Lead code/design reviews and mentor engineers across teams.
• Investigate and resolve complex issues in multi-cloud environments.
• Author and maintain architectural and technical strategy documentation.
• Mentor engineers and coordinate cross-team work.

Skills

Go (Golang)

Distributed systems

Backend/network services

API design (gRPC/Protobuf, REST)

AWS

Mentoring engineers

Security & cryptography

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in computer science/software engineering

Tools

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

Kubernetes

HashiCorp Vault

Job description

About Delinea: Delinea is a pioneer in securing human and machine identities through intelligent, centralized authorization, empowering organizations to seamlessly govern their interactions across the modern enterprise. Leveraging AI-powered intelligence, Delinea’s leading cloud-native Identity Security Platform applies context throughout the entire identity lifecycle - across cloud and traditional infrastructure, data, SaaS applications, and AI. It is the only platform that enables you to discover all identities - including workforce, IT administrator, developers, and machines - assign appropriate access levels, detect irregularities, and respond to threats in real-time. With deployment in weeks, not months, 90% fewer resources to manage than the nearest competitor, and a 99.995% uptime, Delinea delivers robust security and operational efficiency without compromise. Learn more about Delinea on Delinea.com, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube.

Join our passionate, global team at Delinea and help us make the world a safer and more secure place. Our success is driven by world-class product leadership, outstanding engineers, and strategic investment from TPG. We value diversity, innovation, and a culture of respect and fairness. If you're ready to push boundaries and challenge the status quo in security, we want to hear from you.

Job Summary

This position is on the team building StrongDM, now part of Delinea—the universal access management platform that secures and audits access to databases, servers, Kubernetes clusters, and web applications. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will apply deep expertise across distributed systems, security, and cloud architecture to help shape the technical direction of StrongDM’s proxy and control-plane platform. You will take on the platform’s most complex and ambiguous engineering challenges, exercise independent judgment on architecture and design decisions that span multiple teams, and serve as a recognized subject matter expert on secure, high-scale distributed systems written in Go. You will report to the team’s engineering manager.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead the architecture and technical direction of highly concurrent, distributed backend systems in Go (Golang), setting engineering standards that extend across multiple teams within StrongDM and Delinea.
• Drive design decisions for the proxy data plane (gateways and relays) and control-plane services, evaluating tradeoffs on the platform’s most complex and ambiguous technical problems.
• Partner with architects, product managers, and DevOps/SRE leadership to shape multi-quarter system roadmaps, translating broader business priorities into concrete technical strategy.
• Serve as a subject matter expert on secure network protocols and cryptographic systems (TLS/mTLS, credential brokering, key management), guiding their application across the platform.
• Lead code and design reviews across teams, holding a high bar for performance, security, and maintainability, and coach engineers on applying that bar independently.
• Investigate and resolve the most challenging technical issues in distributed, multi-cloud production environments, often requiring evaluation of ambiguous or intangible tradeoffs.
• Author and maintain architectural and technical strategy documentation that informs decisions beyond your immediate team.
• Mentor engineers across the team and may direct the work of others, building the cross-team relationships that help align engineering execution with company objectives.

What You’ll Need:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or related technical discipline.
• 8+ years of professional experience working as a software engineer, with deep expertise in Go (Golang), distributed systems, and backend/network service development at scale.
• Demonstrated experience architecting highly concurrent, distributed systems and exercising independent judgment on methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria, including Go’s standard networking and cryptography libraries.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, network protocols, and API design (gRPC/Protobuf and/or RESTful APIs), with the ability to reason about tradeoffs across an entire system.
• Experience with AWS (or another major cloud provider) and cloud-native deployment models at production scale.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to convey advanced technical concepts and persuade diverse stakeholders and audiences.
• Proven ability to build formal working relationships and coordinate across multiple teams and functions.
• Conceptual thinking skills sufficient to understand advanced technical issues and their broader implications for the business.
• Demonstrated track record mentoring engineers and being recognized as a subject matter expert others turn to for guidance.

We’d Love to See:

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) beyond a single provider.
• Experience establishing or influencing engineering-wide standards for Terraform automation and CI/CD pipelines.
• Deep expertise with secure protocols, mTLS and PKI, secrets management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault), and credential brokering.
• Familiarity with proxying database, SSH/RDP, Kubernetes, and HTTP traffic, and with building CLI or desktop client tooling.
• Experience shaping Zero Trust architecture strategy, just-in-time access models, and policy-as-code (e.g., Cedar) at an organizational level.

For this Job, Delinea is not considering candidates that need any type of US work authorization now or in the future. This includes, but is not limited to: F1-OPT, F1-CPT, H-1B, TN, L-1, J1, etc.

Why work at Delinea?

• We're passionate problem-solvers helping the world's largest organizations protect what matters most: their human and machine identities.
• We invest in people who are smart, self-motivated, and collaborative.
• What we offer in return is meaningful work, a culture of innovation and great career progression.

At Delinea, our core values are STRONG and guide our behaviors and success:

• Spirited - We bring energy and passion to everything we do
• Trust - We act with integrity and deliver on our commitments
• Respect - We listen, value different perspectives, and work as one team
• Ownership - We take initiative and follow through
• Nimble - We adapt quickly in a fast-changing environment
• Global - We embrace diverse people and ideas to drive better outcomes

We believe weaving these core values into our day-to-day actions, and our process for hiring, evaluating, and promoting employees, helps us cultivate a work environment that embraces collaboration and camaraderie.

We take care of our employees.

• Competitive salaries
• Meaningful bonus program
• Excellent benefits, including healthcare insurance
• Pension/retirement matching
• Comprehensive life insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Time off plansPaid company holidays

Delinea is an Equal Opportunity and affirmative action employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type with regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Upon conditional offer of employment, candidates are required to complete comprehensive criminal background check, verification of education, and verification of employment, per employment policy. In addition, all publicly posted social media sites may be reviewed.