Staff Software Engineer

Storm2; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental and vision premiums

401(k) with company match

HSA contributions

Lunch stipend

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Storm2 is seeking an experienced backend engineer to design and build the identity infrastructure for AI agents. You will implement secure credential issuance and verification, and develop high-performance services to verify identities and authorization data in real time.

You will own components of the identity architecture, connect agents to verified entities, and build onboarding and authorization flows. The role requires strong Python/Go skills, cryptographic knowledge, and experience with

Qualifications

• Production-grade backend experience required.
• Security-critical systems experience preferred.
• Proficient in Python or Go and willing to work across both.
• Strong knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT/JWS and credentials.
• Experience designing APIs and distributed services.
• PostgreSQL and asynchronous architectures experience.

Responsibilities

• Design core identity infrastructure for AI agents interacting with financial platforms.
• Build credential issuance and verification systems using OAuth/OIDC/JWS/JWTs.
• Develop high-performance verification services for identities and credentials.
• Own components of identity architecture: claims, authentication, revocation.
• Connect AI agents with verified entities securely.
• Develop onboarding and authorization flows for business agents.
• Maintain auditable systems for identity and trust state.
• Work with Python and Go on modern cloud infra and APIs.
• Collaborate with senior engineers and external platforms.
• Own architecture from design to production deployment.

Skills

Backend development

Python/Go

OAuth/OIDC

JWT/JWS

Security engineering

API design

PostgreSQL

Distributed systems

RFCs reading

Cloud infrastructure

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

We're currently partnering with a high-growth Serie A FinTech start-up building an AI-native product that helps organizations verify and understand the businesses, individuals, and entities they interact and work with. The platform combines identity, risk, compliance, and external data into a unified infrastructure layer that financial institutions and technology companies can use to make faster, more reliable trust decisions.

They are now focusing on the identity layer for AI agents and agentic commerce. As autonomous agents increasingly open accounts, interact with APIs, purchase services, and initiate transactions on behalf of people and businesses, the team is building the identity and trust infrastructure required to verify which agent is acting, who or what it represents, and what it is authorized to do.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core identity infrastructure for AI agents interacting with financial institutions, payment networks, APIs, marketplaces, and other digital platforms.
• Build secure credential issuance and verification systems using technologies such as OAuth/OIDC, JWS, JWTs, and verifiable credentials.
• Develop high-performance verification services capable of validating identities, credentials, signatures, and authorization data in real time.
• Own components of the underlying identity architecture, including credential formats, claims, authentication mechanisms, revocation, and auditability.
• Build infrastructure that securely connects an AI agent with the verified business or individual it represents.
• Develop onboarding and authorization flows that allow businesses to securely grant agents and other software operators permission to act on their behalf.
• Build and maintain auditable systems for tracking identity, authorization, credential issuance, and changes in trust state.
• Work primarily across Python and Go, using modern cloud infrastructure, API frameworks, relational databases, and asynchronous systems.
• Collaborate closely with a small, senior engineering and product team while working with external platforms and infrastructure providers to define how agent identity should work in practice.
• Be part of a start-up inside a start-up and work directly with payment networks, banks, wallet providers and agent platforms.
• Take ownership of technically complex systems from architecture through production deployment and ongoing operation.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering background with experience building production-grade backend systems.
• Experience working on systems where security or cryptographic correctness is critical, such as identity providers, authentication systems, token issuers, signing services, credential systems, WebAuthn/passkeys, or similar infrastructure.
• Strong proficiency in Python or Go, with the ability and willingness to work across both.
• Deep understanding of authentication, identity and authorization concepts, particularly OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT/JWS, digital signatures, credentials, and key management.
• Comfortable reading technical specifications and RFCs and translating them into production systems.
• Experience designing APIs and distributed backend services where reliability, latency, security, and observability matter.
• Production experience with PostgreSQL and asynchronous application architectures.
• Strong understanding of the differences between identity, permissions, credentials, claims, and authorization.
• Comfortable operating in an early-stage environment with significant ownership and relatively little existing precedent.
• Bonus: Experience with verifiable credentials, decentralized identity, SD-JWT, OID4VC, or W3C credential standards.
• Bonus: Experience with append-only or cryptographically verifiable audit logs.
• Bonus: Experience building KYC/KYB, fraud, risk, or identity verification infrastructure.
• Bonus: Experience with edge infrastructure, CDNs, mTLS, Envoy, Cloudflare Workers, or other low-latency verification environments.
• Bonus: Exposure to emerging agentic payments, machine-to-machine commerce, or AI identity protocols.

Why Apply

• Build infrastructure for an emerging industry, working on identity and trust problems created by AI agents before established technical patterns or infrastructure have fully emerged.
• Solve genuinely difficult engineering problems: Work across cryptography, identity, authentication, authorization, distributed systems, security, and low-latency infrastructure.
• High level of technical ownership: Own meaningful parts of the architecture rather than contributing to a narrow feature surface.
• Small, senior team: Work closely with experienced engineers and company leadership in an environment designed for fast decision-making and execution.
• 100% coverage of health, dental and vision premiums.
• 401(k) with company match.
• HSA contributions included.
• $250 monthly gym stipend.
• Daily lunch stipend.
• Hybrid working model with a strong emphasis on in-person collaboration.