Principal Software Engineer
$225,000–$270,000 year
Hybrid · Denver, Colorado, United States
Job Summary
Principal Engineer at FusionAuth delivering strategic technical leadership for a CIAM-focused platform. Responsible for hands-on coding, architecture evolution, and guiding protocol implementations (OAuth 2.x, OIDC, SCIM, SAML) across production systems; engage directly with enterprise customers on technical design; mentor engineers; influence product roadmap with insights on identity trends (passkeys, AI-driven workflows) while ensuring backward compatibility and robust deployment across self-hosted, on-premise, and dedicated cloud environments. Located in the Denver area with a hybrid work model, with open-to-remote authority and quarterly travel to Denver; lead architectural decisions and drive scalable, secure implementations across thousands of customer-managed deployments.
Required Qualifications
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent demonstrable technical depth
- CIAM Protocol Depth: Production-grade expertise in OAuth 2.x, OIDC, SCIM, and SAML
- Experience: 12+ years of professional software engineering, including 5+ years focused on identity, authentication, or security, with meaningful time at the principal, staff, or architect level
- Hands-On Development: Proven track record of shipping code alongside architectural responsibilities
- Distributed Systems: Experience with enterprise-grade, highly available, high-performance distributed systems
- Deployment Architecture: Experience designing or supporting software deployed across self-hosted, on-premise, or dedicated cloud environments
- Customer-Facing Experience: Demonstrated ability to engage directly with enterprise customers and prospects on technical design and architecture
- Design Review: Experience reviewing and approving technical designs in a formal or informal architecture review capacity
- Emerging Standards: Familiarity with emerging identity protocols and standards (FIDO2/passkeys, DPoP, token binding, OAuth 2.x drafts, etc.)
- AI Tooling: Willingness to adopt and use AI-assisted development tools as part of everyday workflow
- Pragmatism: Appreciates first-principles thinking, but knows when to stop theorizing and start building
- Work Location: Denver, Colorado-based with hybrid arrangement; open to others willing to travel to Denver quarterly
Additional Requirements
- Work Authorization: Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. and FusionAuth cannot sponsor employment visas at this time
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