At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the design and evolution of secure authentication systems across our platform.
- Company: Join One Identity, a leader in identity management and security solutions.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, remote work options, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Dynamic team environment with a commitment to diversity and inclusion.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on security-critical systems while mentoring future engineers.
- Qualifications: 8+ years in software engineering with expertise in authentication protocols.
The predicted salary is between 70000 - 90000 £ per year.
One Identity's OneLogin is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the architecture, correctness, and evolution of authentication and access systems across our platform. These systems are among the most security-critical and failure-sensitive areas of the product and require deep expertise in identity protocols, session management, and secure system design.
As a Principal Engineer, you will operate with broad technical ownership—defining standards, guiding implementation, and resolving systemic issues across authentication flows, authorization models, and session behaviour. You will work across teams to ensure that authentication systems are secure, reliable, and consistent, while evolving legacy implementations toward modern, scalable designs. While deeply focused on authentication and access, you will contribute broadly across the platform, applying this expertise to improve system design and reliability in adjacent areas.
This is a hands-on role that includes system design, deep debugging of cross-service behaviour, and driving modernization efforts in a complex distributed SaaS environment. You will also play a key role in mentoring engineers and raising the level of expertise in authentication and access across the organization.
Responsibilities:- Own the correctness, security, and consistency of authentication and access systems across the platform.
- Define and evolve authentication flows, authorization models, and session lifecycle patterns.
- Ensure protocol correctness and consistency across protocols (SAML, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, etc.).
- Establish and drive adoption of consistent authentication and access patterns across teams, ensuring alignment with defined standards.
- Design and validate secure, state-machine-driven authentication workflows.
- Standardize handling of MFA, session behaviour, and authentication edge cases.
- Identify and remediate legacy or inconsistent authentication implementations.
- Improve resilience and secure failure handling across authentication flows.
- Ensure consistent authentication and authorization behaviour across services, APIs, and user entry points.
- Guide the evolution and modernization of authentication systems while maintaining backwards compatibility and correctness.
- Deep experience with authentication and identity protocols (SAML, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, LDAP).
- Strong understanding of session management, including lifecycle, invalidation, and behaviour across distributed systems.
- Experience designing complex authentication flows and state-machine-driven workflows.
- Strong security engineering fundamentals, including secure system design and failure handling.
- Experience working with PKI, certificates, and secure communication patterns.
- Experience debugging complex authentication and session issues across multiple services.
- Experience remediating legacy or inconsistent authentication implementations.
- Experience modernizing authentication systems using incremental migration approaches.
- Strong ability to reason about correctness, edge cases, race conditions, and failure modes.
- Experience working across teams to drive consistency and correctness in a critical domain.
- Experience using AI tools to analyze flows, validate system behaviour, and identify inconsistencies at scale.
- 8+ years of software engineering experience with ownership of critical production systems, including authentication and access services.
- Strong backend development experience (Ruby, Node.js, or similar).
- Experience building and operating authentication, authorization, and API-based services in distributed environments.
- Solid understanding of REST APIs, service contracts, and software design principles.
- Experience building secure, reliable systems with strong testing practices across unit, integration, and service layers.
- Strong ownership of code quality, validation, and handling complex scenarios.
- Experience building and operating services in AWS or similar cloud environments.
- Good understanding of distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, and CI/CD.
- Experience with observability, production debugging, and incident response.
- Willingness to participate in a mandatory 24/7 on-call rotation.
- Experience responding to production incidents and contributing to reliability improvements.
- Experience using, or strong interest in, AI-powered development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Cursor).
- Ability to evaluate and refine AI-generated code, specifications, workflows, and system designs.
One Identity enables organizations of all sizes to better secure, manage, monitor, protect, and analyze information and infrastructure to help fuel innovation and drive their businesses forward. With team members around the globe, we intend to continue to grow revenues and add value to customers.
When you join our team, you will have the opportunity to build and develop products at a scale few others can provide. Our product portfolio serves a large base of customers and we are addressing the strategic imperatives for enterprise businesses. Working with some of the most talented employees the industry has to offer, we provide enhanced career opportunities for team members to learn and grow in a rapidly changing environment.
One Identity is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Prohibits Discrimination and Harassment of Any Kind: One Identity is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at One Identity are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, colour, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV Status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. One Identity will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. One Identity encourages applicants of all ages.
Come join us.
Principal Software Engineer (Authentication & Access) employer: QUEST
One Identity is an exceptional employer that fosters a collaborative and innovative work culture, providing employees with the opportunity to lead critical projects in authentication and access systems. With a commitment to professional growth, team members can enhance their skills while working alongside industry experts in a supportive environment that values diversity and inclusion. Located in a dynamic tech landscape, One Identity offers unique advantages such as exposure to cutting-edge technologies and the chance to make a significant impact on enterprise security solutions.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Principal Software Engineer (Authentication & Access)
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at QUEST or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to QUEST.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
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✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like QUEST that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Principal Software Engineer (Authentication & Access)
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at QUEST.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at QUEST and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at QUEST
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If QUEST uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.