Staff Software Engineer - Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM)

About the Role

Join our dynamic Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) team as a Staff Software Engineer and play a pivotal role in building cutting-edge solutions that centralize and simplify how organizations manage user identities and profile data. Our CIAM team is committed to empowering customers with control over user access by providing advanced access control mechanisms, innovative authentication methods, progressive profiling, and a unified identity experience.

What You'll Do

• Design and build secure, scalable identity services supporting authentication, authorization, identity lifecycle, and related platform capabilities.
• Lead implementation of complex technical initiatives from design through production, balancing long-term architecture with practical delivery.
• Serve as the technical lead for one or more core areas of the CIAM platform, guiding architecture, reviewing designs, and helping teams make sound technical decisions.
• Partner with engineering, product, and security to shape implementation plans, prioritize technical investments, and identify risks early.
• Break down ambiguous technical problems into practical, incremental solutions while maintaining a high bar for engineering quality.
• Champion modern, standards-based identity patterns and help teams adopt engineering best practices across the CIAM platform.
• Improve the reliability, security, and maintainability of identity-related services through strong architectural decisions and operational rigor.
• Mentor engineers within the CIAM organization through design reviews, technical guidance, and collaborative problem solving.
• Contribute to an inclusive engineering culture grounded in curiosity, pragmatism, and continuous improvement.
• Participate in on-call support rotation as needed.

What We're Looking For

• Significant experience designing and operating authentication and authorization systems in production environments. Staff engineers at Fastly typically have 7+ years of relevant experience.
• Deep understanding of identity and access standards and technologies such as OIDC, OAuth, SAML, SCIM, JWT, and SSO.
• Experience with service-to-service authentication and secure communication patterns in distributed systems.
• Strong background in software architecture and system design, especially in areas of scalability, performance, reliability, and security.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership across multiple teams through architectural guidance, delivery of complex initiatives, and collaborative influence.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation and align diverse stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Go, Java, or Ruby.
• Experience with Keycloak.
• Production experience implementing Role and Attribute-based Access control systems.
• Experience designing secure identity systems with strong consideration for authentication threats, authorization models, and operational resilience.

Work Hours & Travel

• Availability required during core business hours and occasional nights and weekends as necessary for on-call coverage.
• Quarterly travel may be required to align on technical designs and direction.

Interview Policy

• To ensure a fair and equitable interview process, the use of AI technologies—including real-time transcription tools, automated scripts, AI copilots, or external assistants—is strictly prohibited during the interview process unless explicitly authorized in advance.