Staff Software Engineer I - Internal Access Management

What You Will Do

• Define and drive the long-term architecture and roadmap for Internal Access Management across Kubernetes and multi-cloud environments.
• Architect and implement least privilege, just-in-time access, and zero-trust models across Confluent services.
• Build and evolve scalable access-authorization workflows and lifecycle management systems using technologies such as OPA, cloud IAM policies, workload identity, and internal enforcement engines.
• Strengthen security boundaries through threat modeling, defense-in-depth practices, and comprehensive access-auditing capabilities.
• Partner with cross-functional teams—including Platform, Kafka, Observability, Developer Productivity, Release Engineering, and SRE—to drive adoption of secure identity and access patterns.
• Mentor senior engineers, elevate engineering standards, and influence architectural decisions across the organization.
• Communicate complex technical decisions clearly and align stakeholders across engineering and security.

What You Will Bring

• 10+ years of engineering experience, with 4+ years in security, IAM, or distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes, workload identity, cloud IAM (AWS, GCP, Azure), and zero-trust architectures.
• Strong understanding of authentication technologies: IAM, OAuth2, OIDC, policy engines, and modern zero-trust principles.
• Proven track record leading multi-team technical initiatives at a Staff or Senior Staff level.
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, container orchestration, and service mesh.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-influence skills across engineering and security domains.

What Gives You an Edge

• Experience leading cross-org security platform architecture initiatives.
• Background in building developer-focused authentication and authorization platforms.

Ready to build what's next? Let’s get in motion.

Come As You AreBelonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law.

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