Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. Fastly’s edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the Internet. The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet, to be programmable, and to support agile software development. Fastly’s customers include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including GitHub, Yelp, Paramount, and JetBlue.
We're building a more trustworthy Internet. Come join us.
Posting Open Date: May 12, 2026
Anticipated Posting Close Date*: May 30, 2026
*Job posting may close early due to the volume of applicants.
Principal Software Engineer - Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM)
Join our dynamic Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) team as a Principal 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.
We are looking for passionate, highly skilled software engineers to join our team and be an integral part of our mission. If you're eager to make a significant impact and contribute to the growth of a thriving CIAM ecosystem, we would love to have you on board. Let's build something remarkable together!
What You'll Do
- Lead the technical direction, architecture, and evolution of Fastly’s CIAM systems and services.
- Design and build secure, scalable solutions for authentication, authorization, identity lifecycle, and related platform capabilities.
- Partner with engineering, product, and security teams to define roadmaps, align priorities, and address technical risks early.
- Drive adoption of modern, standards-based identity patterns and best practices across teams and systems.
- Improve the reliability, security, and maintainability of identity-related services through strong architectural decisions and operational rigor.
- Mentor engineers across the organization, helping raise the quality of technical design, implementation, and collaboration.
- 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. Most Principals at Fastly have at least 10 years of related 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 lead complex technical initiatives across multiple teams and influence engineering direction at senior levels.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation and align diverse stakeholders.
- Track record of mentoring and growing other engineers, both within your domain of expertise and more broadly across engineering.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with Keycloak
- Production experience implementing Role and Attribute-based Access control systems
- Experience with Go, Java, or Ruby
Work Hours:
This position will require you to be available during core business hours and occasional nights and weekends as needed for on call support
Work Location(s) & Travel Requirements:
The preferred hybrid locations for this position are:
San Francisco, CA
Denver, CO
New York, NY
Fastly currently embraces a largely hybrid model for most roles which allows employees flexibility to split their time between the office and home.
We are also willing to consider highly qualified remote candidates in the United States.
This position will require travel as required by your manager.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Salary
The estimated salary range for this position is $246,550 to $295,000. Starting salary may vary based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as experience, skills, qualifications, and location.
This role may be eligible to participate in Fastly’s equity and discretionary bonus programs.
Benefits
We care about you. Fastly works hard to create a positive environment for our employees, and we think your life outside of work is important too. We support our teams with great benefits that start on the first day of your employment with Fastly. Curious about our offerings?
We offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance. Family planning, mental health support along with Employee Assistance Program, Insurance (Life, Disability, and Accident), an open vacation policy and up to 18 days of accrued paid sick leave are there to help support our employees. We also offer 401(k) (including company match) and an Employee Stock Purchase Program. For 2026, we offer 11 paid local holidays, 12 paid company wellness days.
Why Fastly?
We have a huge impact. Fastly is a small company with a big reach. Not only do our customers have a tremendous user base, but we also support a growing number of open source projects and initiatives. Outside of code, employees are encouraged to share causes close to their heart with others so we can help lend a supportive hand.
We value diversity. Growing and maintaining our inclusive and diverse team matters to us. We are committed to being a company where our employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work and have the ability to be successful -- every day.
We are passionate. Fastly is chock full of passionate people and we’re not ‘one size fits all’. Fastly employs authors, pilots, skiers, parents (of humans and animals), makeup geeks, coffee connoisseurs, and more. We love employees for who they are and what they are passionate about.
We’re always looking for humble, sharp, and creative folks to join the Fastly team. If you think you might be a fit please apply! A fully completed application and resume or CV are required when applying.
All job applications must be submitted through our official careers site at www.fastly.com/about/careers. We will never request sensitive information, such as your Social Security number, bank account or credit card information during the application process. All official communication will come from an @fastly.com or @recruiting.fastly.com email address.
Fastly is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity and to providing employees with a safe and welcoming work environment free of discrimination and harassment. Our employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, family or parental status, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.
Consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and federal or state disability laws, Fastly will provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact your Recruiter, or the Fastly Employee Relations team at [email protected] or 501-287-4901.
Fastly collects and processes personal data submitted by job applicants in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Please see our privacy notice for job applicants.
Skills Required
- Significant experience designing and operating authentication and authorization systems in production environments
- 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 lead complex technical initiatives across multiple teams and influence engineering direction at senior levels
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation
- Track record of mentoring and growing other engineers, both within your domain of expertise and more broadly across engineering
Fastly Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Fastly and has not been reviewed or approved by Fastly.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is described as comprehensive, including medical, dental, vision, disability, and mental‑health resources with day‑one eligibility. Feedback suggests this breadth is a consistent strength for many roles.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off includes flexible vacation, sick leave, local holidays, and additional wellness days. Feedback suggests this structure is a notable advantage for work–life balance.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity grants and an employee stock purchase plan are widely available, enhancing a sense of ownership. Role information consistently references eligibility, indicating broad accessibility.
Fastly Insights
What We Do
Get more powerful websites and applications with Fastly’s edge cloud platform. We help places like Shopify, the NYT, and Stripe do so every day.
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