Senior Staff Backend Engineer (IAM)

Bengaluru. Posted 3 months ago

The role

This person will lead backend engineering efforts for identity and access management for a next-generation AI cloud platform. They will build and scale identity and authentication systems and manage user and machine identities.

What you will do

Lead and grow a high-performing backend engineering team focused on identity and access management
Drive development of core IAM capabilities including authentication, authorization, and identity lifecycle management
Design and build scalable systems for user identity and machine identity management within a cloud environment
Work on modern authentication protocols such as OAuth2, OIDC, and SAML, and implement secure service-to-service authentication
Build and evolve authorization frameworks leveraging RBAC/ABAC models and policy engines
Partner with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, scalable infrastructure for AI workloads
Drive technical design, execution planning, and delivery of complex distributed systems
Ensure reliability, scalability, and security of identity systems
Mentor engineers and foster a strong engineering culture

Required qualifications

13 - 17 years of backend software engineering experience
Strong experience in backend development using Java or Python with REST API design
Hands-on experience with authentication and authorization technologies (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML)
Solid understanding of identity systems including user identity and machine/workload identity
Experience with service-to-service authentication and distributed system security
Strong problem-solving and execution skills with ability to break down complex systems
Experience working in cloud environments

Nice to have

AWS preferred
Experience building IAM systems in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Familiarity with PKI, certificate lifecycle management, and secure identity frameworks
Experience with authorization frameworks (RBAC, ABAC, OPA)
Exposure to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures
Experience working on large-scale distributed systems handling high request volumes
Background in platform engineering or infrastructure teams

About the company

Coupang is a fast-growing e-commerce company and a dominant force in South Korean commerce. It has a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company.