Dive in and do the best work of your career at DigitalOcean. Journey alongside a strong community of top talent who are relentless in their drive to build the simplest scalable cloud. If you have a growth mindset, naturally like to think big and bold, and are energized by the fast-paced environment of a true industry disruptor, you’ll find your place here. We value winning together—while learning, having fun, and making a profound difference for the dreamers and builders in the world.
We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer (IC3) to join our Customer Trust & Engineering team working on Identity and Access Management. IAM is the bedrock of trust at DigitalOcean; our services sit in the critical path of every request, authorizing billions of transactions per second with single-digit millisecond latency.
In this role, you won't just maintain existing systems—you will architect the next generation of our Identity platform. You will be instrumental in supporting our AI initiatives, building seamless SSO integrations for global partners, and evolving our policy engine to support complex, agentic workflows. If you are passionate about distributed systems, security-first engineering, and building at hyperscale, this is the team for you.
What You’ll Do- Architect for Scale: Design and develop high-availability, low-latency authentication and authorization services in Go that scale to handle massive load spikes across global regions.
- Drive Next-Gen Innovation: Build the IAM foundations for emerging cloud-native AI/ML platforms, designing secure token exchange patterns and identity context injection for agentic AI workflows.
- Modernize Identity: Lead the implementation of OIDC and SAML integrations, enabling seamless federated Single Sign-On (SSO) for enterprise customers and strategic global partners.
- Solve Complex AuthZ: Evolve our Policy Engine (using industry standards like Rego/OPA) to support advanced resource-level permissions, dynamic scoping, and network-aware access conditions.
- Evolve Identity Models: Design and scale robust, multi-tenant data models to manage complex hierarchical structures (users, teams, organizations, and resource boundaries) that map to enterprise customer needs.
- Operational Excellence: Take ownership of service reliability, from fine-tuning Kubernetes deployments to migrating legacy data pipelines to modern eventing architectures.
- Security First: Proactively identify and remediate complex security vulnerabilities, ensuring our auth flows are resilient against credential stuffing, session hijacking, and configuration theft.
- Mentor & Lead: Act as a technical lead for major workstreams, conducting deep code reviews and mentoring junior engineers in distributed systems best practices.
- Experience: 5+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2+ years focused on Identity (AuthN/AuthZ), Security Products, or high-scale Distributed Systems.
- Language Expert: Expert-level proficiency in Go and a strong understanding of gRPC microservices architecture.
- Identity Specialist: Deep knowledge of identity protocols (OIDC, OAuth2, SAML) and access control models (RBAC, ABAC, PBAC).
- Distributed Systems Guru: Proven ability to build systems that handle consensus, replication, and partitioning at cloud scale.
- Cloud Native: Working experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes), SQL (MySQL), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
- Problem Solver: A track record of "unwinding" complex legacy logic into clean, maintainable abstractions.
- Communication: Ability to communicate technical strategy to senior leadership and collaborate across teams (Inference, Billing, DOKS).
- Experience with Open Policy Agent (OPA) and Rego.
- Familiarity with Cloud-native deployment strategies (Canary/Blue-Green) via kubernetes.
- $140,800 - $176,000
*This is a hybrid role
JR: 2026-7665
#LI-Hybrid
- We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions.
- We prioritize career development. At DO, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses to support their continued growth and development.
- We care about your well-being. Regardless of your location, we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy, to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide, specific benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.
- We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company and individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program.
- DigitalOcean is an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.
Application Limit: You may apply to a maximum of 3 positions within any 180-day period. This policy promotes better role-candidate matching and encourages thoughtful applications where your qualifications align most strongly.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of software engineering experience
- 2+ years focused on Identity, access management, security products, or high-scale distributed systems
- Expert-level proficiency in Go
- Strong understanding of gRPC microservices architecture
- Deep knowledge of OIDC, OAuth2, and SAML
- Knowledge of RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC access-control models
- Experience building distributed systems involving consensus, replication, and partitioning at cloud scale
- Experience with Kubernetes
- Experience with SQL and MySQL
- Experience with Terraform
- Ability to simplify complex legacy logic into maintainable abstractions
- Ability to communicate technical strategy to senior leadership and collaborate across teams
- Experience with Open Policy Agent and Rego
- Familiarity with Kubernetes canary or blue-green deployment strategies
DigitalOcean Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is described as “market‑leading” across medical, dental, vision, and mental health, with 100% employer‑paid life and disability insurance. Wellbeing resources such as an EAP and tools like Headspace, Carrot, and Rightway are also highlighted.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Ownership opportunities include new‑hire and performance RSU grants alongside an Employee Stock Purchase Plan offered at a discount. These elements are positioned as core components of the total‑rewards package.
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Retirement Support — Retirement programs feature a safe‑harbor 401(k) with employer match and immediate vesting, plus HSA contributions and a suite of FSAs. These offerings are presented to strengthen long‑term financial security.
DigitalOcean Insights
What We Do
DigitalOcean is the Inference Cloud — a full-stack, production-ready cloud platform built to run AI applications with predictable performance, sustainable economics, and radically simpler operations at scale. We are built for teams turning AI into real products — not just training models. Our advantage is not fewer features, but fewer failure modes when operating AI at scale — combining minimal operational overhead, predictable cost efficiency, and a full-stack cloud that works as a system. Hyperscalers are broad by design. Neoclouds are infrastructure-first. DigitalOcean is inference-first — with a real cloud underneath. It combines inference-optimized compute, managed inference software, and integrated cloud capabilities that reduce operational burden for teams running real workloads. Inference is the foundation—not the boundary. Everything else builds on top of it.
Why Work With Us
At DO, we do career-defining work. We innovate with AI and build cutting-edge tech. Our rewards to match that intensity - to motivate you, recognize your impact, and give you what you need to thrive. If you have a growth mindset, like to think big and bold, and are energized by the fast-paced environment, you'll find your place here.
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Remote Workspace
Employees work remotely.
We commit to both remote work and in-person collaboration. These ways of working are dependent on specific roles and are mutually agreed upon by employees. In the US, we are mainly remote. In our APAC locations, we have a hybrid in-office approach.
