Principal Software Engineer (Identity Workflows)

Principal Software Engineer (Identity Workflows)

Full-Time 80000 - 100000 £ / year (est.) No working from home possible
Q

At a Glance

  • Tasks: Lead the design and evolution of identity workflow systems at scale.
  • Company: Join One Identity, a global leader in secure identity management.
  • 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 innovative identity solutions while mentoring future engineers.
  • Qualifications: 8+ years in software engineering with expertise in distributed systems.

The predicted salary is between 80000 - 100000 £ per year.

One Identity's OneLogin team is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the architecture, correctness, and evolution of identity workflow systems across our platform. These systems are responsible for executing identity and resource lifecycle operations at scale and require deep expertise in distributed systems, asynchronous processing, and reliability under real-world conditions.

As a Principal Engineer, you will operate with broad technical ownership—defining standards, guiding implementation, and resolving systemic issues across provisioning workflows, mapping systems, and distributed execution pipelines. You will work across teams to ensure that identity workflows are reliable, scalable, and consistent while evolving legacy implementations toward modern, resilient architectures. This is a hands-on role that includes system design, debugging complex cross-service workflows, and driving improvements in high-throughput, asynchronous systems. You will also play a key role in mentoring engineers and raising the level of expertise in distributed systems and workflow execution across the organization.

Responsibilities

  • Own the execution of identity and resource lifecycle workflows through scalable, reliable distributed systems that transform intent into consistent, correct outcomes at scale.
  • Design and evolve distributed workflow systems (e.g., pipelines, queues, workers, transformation layers).
  • Ensure correctness of asynchronous execution across retries, failures, and partial completion scenarios.
  • Define and enforce patterns for idempotency, ordering, and consistency in distributed workflows.
  • Optimize throughput, parallelism, and system performance across large-scale worker fleets.
  • Improve reliability through robust retry strategies, backpressure handling, and failure recovery mechanisms.
  • Define and manage ordering and consistency guarantees in distributed workflows where sequencing and dependencies matter.
  • Ensure observability and diagnosability of workflows, including tracing, metrics, and runtime inspection.
  • Ensure deterministic and correct system behavior across retries, reprocessing, and partial execution scenarios.
  • Identify high-impact areas for improving performance, reliability, and scalability in workflow systems.
  • Guide evolution of legacy batch or monolithic processing into scalable, distributed execution models.

Ideal Experience:

  • Deep experience building and operating distributed systems with asynchronous execution models.
  • Strong experience with queue-based architectures (e.g., Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ, or equivalent).
  • Experience designing and operating worker-based systems at scale.
  • Strong understanding of eventual consistency, idempotency, and failure handling in distributed workflows.
  • Experience with concurrency, parallelism, and multiprocessing across distributed environments.
  • Experience operating systems in Kubernetes environments, including HPA-driven scaling.
  • Experience improving throughput, performance, and system efficiency under high load.
  • Experience debugging complex distributed systems involving queues, workers, and multiple services.
  • Experience building resilient systems with retry handling, dead-letter queues, and reprocessing strategies.
  • Experience evolving legacy batch or pipeline systems into modern distributed architectures.
  • Strong intuition for system behavior under failure, scale, and partial execution.
  • Experience using AI tools to analyze system behavior, debug workflows, and improve observability.

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of software engineering experience with ownership of distributed or high-scale production systems.
  • Strong backend development experience (Ruby, Node.js, or similar).
  • Solid understanding of APIs, distributed architectures, and software design principles.
  • Experience designing, building, and operating distributed, asynchronous systems.
  • 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, workflows, system behavior, and operational insights.

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, color, 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 (Identity Workflows) employer: QUEST

One Identity is an exceptional employer that fosters a collaborative and innovative work culture, empowering employees to take ownership of their projects while working on cutting-edge identity workflow systems. With a strong commitment to professional development, team members have access to enhanced career growth opportunities and the chance to work alongside some of the industry's most talented professionals. Located in a dynamic environment, One Identity prioritises diversity and inclusion, ensuring a workplace free from discrimination and harassment, making it an ideal place for meaningful and rewarding employment.

Q

Contact Details:

QUEST Recruitment Team

StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫

We think this is how you could land Principal Software Engineer (Identity Workflows)

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Contribute to Open Source Projects

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We think you need these skills to ace Principal Software Engineer (Identity Workflows)

Distributed Systems
Asynchronous Processing
System Design
Debugging Complex Workflows
Scalable Architecture
Queue-Based Architectures (e.g., Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ)
Concurrency and Parallelism

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.