Staff Software Engineer (Authentication)

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Authentication team, you will set technical direction for the cloud services and infrastructure behind Passport, guiding the team through its continued migration to the cloud platform. You will operate beyond a single service or sprint, leading complex, multi-quarter initiatives that improve the reliability, scalability, performance, and security posture of Authentication's systems. This is an individual contributor role with broad technical influence and no direct people-management responsibility. You will partner closely with engineering leaders, product, test and research to shape architecture, resolve systemic risks, and turn ambiguous problems into durable solutions. More specifically, you will: - Define and evolve the technical strategy and architectural direction for Passport's cloud services, spanning multiple subsystems and workflows. - Lead high-impact, ambiguous initiatives from problem framing and design through implementation, rollout, and operational follow-through, using Go and Python. - Set technical standards and reusable patterns for cloud-native services across AWS and GCP, including services such as Kinesis, DynamoDB, and S3, with a focus on reliability, scale, and secure production operation. - Make and communicate consequential tradeoffs involving reliability, scalability, latency, security, cost, and time to market. - Anticipate systemic risks, identify architectural gaps, and drive mitigation before they affect customers, delivery velocity, or operational stability. - Partner closely with software engineering, test engineering, research, product teams to align roadmaps and deliver new capabilities. - Lead technical reviews and facilitate alignment on complex design decisions, migration strategies, and ownership boundaries. - Participate in incident response for critical systems, translating operational learnings into durable improvements in alerting, runbooks, deployment quality, and service ownership, using modern observability tooling to reduce ticket volume. - Raise the effectiveness of engineers across the team through mentorship, code reviews, technical guidance, and hands-on collaboration. - Participate in the team's on-call rotation, including helping cover after-hours alerts as the team expands distributed support coverage. Who you are - You are a systems thinker who can connect architectural decisions to customer impact, business priorities, and long-term engineering health. - You are an owner who can independently drive work from design through production with strong judgment around performance, scale, and security. - You are widely trusted to lead complex technical discussions, create alignment, and influence decisions without relying on formal authority. - You are comfortable operating in ambiguity, making progress with incomplete information, and adapting technical direction as new evidence emerges. - You communicate complex system behavior, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions clearly to engineers, product, and cross-functional partners. - You remain calm and accountable during incidents, architectural challenges, and shifting priorities. - You are invested in helping others grow and bring a mentorship mindset to code reviews, collaboration, and team development. - You are motivated by authentication, identity, and security-sensitive backend engineering at scale. Your skill-set Must-haves: - 8+ years of professional software development experience building backend services and APIs, or equivalent practical depth. - Demonstrated Staff-level impact: leading significant technical initiatives across multiple services or domains and delivering measurable outcomes. - Strong hands-on experience with Go, Python, or similar languages, plus a deep foundation in data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and Linux-based development. - Deep experience designing and operating cloud-native systems in AWS or GCP, including managed services such as S3, DynamoDB, Kinesis, and IAM. - Proven ownership of highly available systems, including deployment, monitoring, troubleshooting, incident response, and operational improvement, using CI/CD, Docker, and Kubernetes. - Experience defining or influencing technical standards, architecture, or roadmaps across team boundaries. - Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document decisions and build alignment among stakeholders with different priorities. Nice-to-haves: - Experience with backend data stores and messaging technologies such as Redis, MySQL, RabbitMQ, and Elasticsearch. - Experience in authentication, identity, fraud prevention, or other security-sensitive product environments. - Strong observability practices across metrics, logs, and traces, with a track record of using them to drive production diagnostics. - Experience leading large-scale migrations, reliability programs, or cost and capacity optimization efforts. - Experience designing internal platforms, developer tooling, or reusable engineering patterns adopted by multiple teams. - Exposure to UI work or adjacent product experiences that connect backend systems to customer-facing workflows. What's in it for you At Pindrop, you'll work on the backend and platform systems that power Passport, helping secure critical customer interactions where trust, fraud prevention, and identity verification matter every day. You'll tackle meaningful cloud engineering challenges that shape reliability, scalability, and the speed at which products reach customers, with direct visibility into the impact of your work. As a staff engineer, you'll have the opportunity to influence architecture, raise technical standards, and help strengthen a growing team alongside experienced partners across the platform. You'll join a company operating at the intersection of authentication, fraud prevention, and deepfake defense, where strong engineering directly supports the business and the customers who rely on it. What we offer As a part of Pindrop, you'll have a direct impact on our growing list of products and the future of security in the voice-driven economy. We hire great people and take care of them. Here's a snapshot of the benefits we offer: - Competitive compensation package, including RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) for all employees, so everyone shares in our long-term success. - Remote-first environment - giving you flexibility and autonomy in how you structure your day. - While we work flexibly, we prioritize meaningful in-person moments through regular team on-sites, company-wide events, and intentional gatherings that foster connection, collaboration, and shared success. - Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO) - Generous health and welfare plans to choose from - including one employer-paid "employee-only" plan! - Best-in-class Health Savings Account (HSA) employer contribution - Low-cost vision and dental plans for you and your family, providing comprehensive coverage and peace of mind. - Paid Parental Leave - Including birth, adoptive & foster parents - One year of diaper delivery for your newest addition to the family! It's our way of welcoming new Pindroplets to the family! - Recurring monthly phone and internet allowance to help cover essential connectivity costs and support flexible work. - Enhanced fertility and GLP-1 benefits to support family-building journeys and personalized health needs. - Annual Learning & Development stipend to support your professional growth, skill-building, certifications, and continued education. This position will be posted for 30 days, until October 28, 2026. #LI-Remote Please note that the base pay range is a general guideline only. Pindrop considers factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, a candidate's work experience, education/training, and key skills, as well as market and business considerations, when extending an offer. US Base Pay Range $150,000-$200,000 USD Not sure if this is you? We want a diverse, global team, with a broad range of experience and perspectives. If this job sounds great, but you're not sure if you qualify, apply anyway! We carefully consider every application and will either move forward with you, find another team that might be a better fit, keep in touch for future opportunities, or thank you for your time. AI - A Transformative Force At Pindrop, we view artificial intelligence as a transformative force that, when harnessed responsibly, can unlock unprecedented value for our customers, partners and society and enable and empower us to continue to deliver cutting-edge technology to combat fraud and unblur the lines between what it means to be human versus machine. Pindrop may use AI tools to help prioritize job applications for human review. The AI tool may analyze your work experience and skills to assess fit for the role, but does not consider your name or contact details. Applications with the strongest match to job requirements are prioritized for human review; not all applications may be individually reviewed.