Staff Software Development Engineer – Wallet - Authentication

About this role

Company Overview

IDMe is the next-generation digital identity wallet that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with IDMe once and seamlessly login across websites without having to create a new login and verify their identity again. Over 175 million users experience streamlined login and identity verification with IDMe at 22 federal agencies, 50 state government agencies, and more than 100 healthcare organizations. Over 600 consumer brands use IDMe to verify communities and user segments to honor service and build more authentic relationships. IDMe’s technology meets the federal standards for consumer authentication set by the Commerce Department and is approved as a NIST 800-63-3 IAL2 / AAL2 credential service provider by the Kantara Initiative. IDMe is committed to “No Identity Left Behind” to enable all people to have a secure digital identity. To learn more, visit https://network.id.me/.

IDMe is a full-time, in-office culture. Unless a specific job description explicitly states otherwise, all roles are on-site five days per week at one of our offices in McLean, VA; Mountain View, CA; New York City, NY; or Tampa, FL. Certain roles — such as field-based sales or other remote-by-design positions — may have different work arrangements as noted in their individual postings.

At IDMe, we embrace the thoughtful use of AI tools in our daily work and there are even occasions where we leverage AI in our hiring process. However, during the interview process, we want to understand your individual skills and experiences. Therefore, we have guidelines on how AI can be appropriately used during your application and interviews which can be found here.

Role Overview

ID.me is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Wallet - Authentication team, which builds the core sign-in, registration, and account management experiences that over 170 million members rely on to access the ID.me identity wallet. Authentication is the front door to ID.me: every member journey begins with creating, signing into, or managing their Wallet. The team owns sign-in, registration, MFA, account recovery, password reset, and MyWallet, along with the real-time risk engine that keeps those flows secure, ensuring members can access their verified identity across numerous federal agencies, state governments, healthcare organizations, and consumer brands.

Authentication sits at the intersection of identity, security, and consumer experience. Every feature the team ships balances three concerns at once: security that defends against credential attacks, account takeover, and abuse; usability that keeps friction low so legitimate members get in quickly; and trust that gives members confidence their identity is protected. The team's real-time risk engine is central to this balance, adapting authentication requirements to the risk of each attempt. The experiences the team builds are reusable across every ID.me member journey, not purpose-built for a single relying party or use case.

As a Staff Software Development Engineer (P5), you will be a backend and API technical anchor for this team. You will contribute to the architecture of the services, data models, and APIs behind sign-in, registration, MFA, account recovery, and account management, and own defined portions of the authentication platform end-to-end. You will help shape the API contracts that internal teams and downstream relying parties depend on and serve as a go-to engineer for how authentication is built, secured, and scaled. The ideal candidate brings deep backend and API expertise, strong instincts for secure, high-availability distributed systems, and the ability to translate complex security, risk, and identity requirements into reliable, low-friction authentication services.

This position will work from our Mountain View, CA office five days per week.

Key Responsibilities

• Build & Own Authentication Services: Contribute to the architecture of the services and APIs behind sign-in, registration, MFA, account recovery, password reset, and MyWallet, and own defined portions end-to-end. Take loosely defined, high-ambiguity problems, clarify requirements with stakeholders, and drive initiatives from definition through deployment and post-launch evaluation. Design for reuse and extensibility across member journeys so that new authentication methods and requirements need configuration, not rewrites.

• Design & Own APIs and Integrations: Design, document, and evolve REST and event-driven APIs that expose authentication capabilities to internal teams and downstream relying parties. Own the contracts and full lifecycle — versioning, backwards compatibility, and deprecation — for the APIs you own, holding a high bar for reliability, latency, and security. Ensure these interfaces integrate seamlessly across ID.me's ecosystem and remain a stable foundation others can build on. Own key integrations with MFA providers, email/SMS delivery services, internal identity services, and downstream relying parties, including their failure modes and reliability, and proactively surface issues and opportunities discovered during integration work.

• Advance the Real-Time Risk & Abuse Mitigation Platform: Contribute to and evolve the team's real-time risk engine and drive its integration across authentication flows — detecting and mitigating credential attacks, account takeover, and abuse while preserving a low-friction experience for legitimate members. Drive step-up authentication, MFA challenges, and adaptive friction that respond to the risk of each attempt, and design these safeguards to be configurable across member journeys rather than specific to one flow. Treat security as a first-class concern in every system you design.

• Data Models, Distributed Systems & Production Health: Develop robust data models and storage patterns for credentials, sessions, and account state across relational and other data…