Staff Software Engineer - IAM

Harness is the AI Software Delivery Platform company, led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7B). Harness has raised approximately $570M in funding and is valued at $5.5B, backed by leading investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures, Citi Ventures, and more. As AI accelerates code creation, the real bottleneck has shifted to everything after the code – testing, deployments, application security, reliability, compliance, and cost optimization. Harness brings AI and automation to this “outer loop,” helping teams ship software faster while maintaining security and governance throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle. Powered by Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the Harness Platform applies deep context and intelligent automation across the software delivery lifecycle with governance and policy-driven controls embedded throughout the platform.  Over the past year, Harness powered over 185M deployments, 82M builds, 18T flag evaluations, 8M security scans, 9.1B optimized tests, 3T protected API calls, and helped manage $2.8B in cloud spend — enabling customers like United Airlines, Morningstar, and Choice Hotels to accelerate releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by up to 60%, and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency.  With a global team across 26 offices and 27 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI software delivery — and we’re looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster.Position Summary This role comes under the Platform Engineering charter, focused on designing and developing core Authentication (AuthN) and Authorization (AuthZ) infrastructure that powers the entire Harness platform. The team is responsible for building foundational identity services, implementing fine-grained access control, and standardizing security patterns across all Harness modules.The Platform IAM team serves as the security backbone for our global enterprise customer base. You will ensure secure, scalable, and high-performance access management across a complex multi-region and multi-tenant architecture, ensuring reliability for mission-critical workflows. About the Role You will design and implement scalable authentication and authorization systems using modern patterns and distributed architecture principles You will build high-performance microservices for identity federation, token validation, and permission evaluation that support high-volume API traffic You will drive the architecture for enterprise integrations including SAML, OIDC, SCIM, and LDAP to support diverse customer environments You will collaborate closely with Principal Engineers to standardize authentication middleware and API gateway patterns across the platform You will solve complex distributed systems challenges related to database optimization, query performance, and data consistency at scale You will work with SRE teams to define SLIs/SLOs and ensure operational excellence of critical security infrastructure You will contribute to API design and rate-limiting strategies that provide secure, efficient access to organizational resources About You Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field Experience: 8+ years of backend engineering experience with a strong focus on building production identity or authorization systems Core Technologies: Expert-level proficiency in Java or Golang with a focus on concurrency, memory management, and distributed systems design Security Expertise: Deep understanding of standard authentication protocols (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML) and/or access control models (RBAC/ReBAC) API Development: Experience with gRPC, RESTful APIs, and designing secure API architectures with proper access controls Distributed Systems: Strong knowledge of microservices patterns, service mesh (e.g., Istio), and data consistency challenges Database Technologies: Experience with relational (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases, including schema design for performance Cloud Platforms: Hands-on experience with cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and container orchestration (Kubernetes) Work Location Mountain View, CA - Hybrid What You Will Have at Harness Competitive salary Comprehensive healthcare benefits Flexible Spending Account (FSA) Employee Assistance Program (EAP) Flexible Time Off and Parental Leave Quarterly Harness TGIF-Off / 4 days Monthly, quarterly, and annual social and team-building events Recharge & Reset Program Monthly internet reimbursement Commuter benefits Preferred Qualifications Experience operating P0 services with strict latency requirements (<100ms) and high throughput (10k+ ops/sec) Exposure to Google Zanzibar derivatives (e.g., Authzed SpiceDB) or OPA (Open Policy Agent) Familiarity with Identity Provider internals (Keycloak, Auth0, Okta) and federation complexity Experience with API Gateway technologies (Envoy, Kong) and edge security patterns Technical Focus Areas Identity Federation & SSO Distributed Authorization (ReBAC) API Gateway & Middleware High-Performance Distributed Systems Database Optimization & Caching Multi-Tenancy Architecture Operational Excellence The anticipated base salary range for this position is $181,000.00 - $226,000.00 annually. Salary is determined by a combination of factors including location, level, relevant experience, and skills. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. The compensation package for this position may also include equity, and benefits. More details about our company benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.harness.io/company/careers. A valid authorization to work in the U.S. is required  Pay transparency$181,000—$226,000 USDHarness in the news: Accelerating Our Mission to Bring AI to Everything After Code Goldman Sachs leads investment in software delivery startup H