Senior Staff Software Engineer - Internal Access Management

At Confluent, we're revolutionizing the movement of data, ensuring that it doesn't just sit still but streams in real-time to enable dynamic responses and smarter solutions. If you are someone who thrives in collaborative environments and is eager to contribute to something bigger, we want to hear from you!

We're looking for a passionate and experienced Staff Software Engineer to take ownership of the technical vision, architecture, and execution for Internal Access Management. This pivotal role involves deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud security, authentication, and policy-driven authorization frameworks.

What You Will Do: • Define and drive the long-term architecture and roadmap for Internal Access Management across Kubernetes and multi-cloud environments. • Architect and implement least privilege, just-in-time access, and zero-trust models across Confluent services. • Build scalable access-authority workflows and lifecycle management systems utilizing OPA, cloud IAM policies, and internal enforcement engines. • Enhance security through rigorous threat modeling, defense-in-depth practices, and comprehensive access auditing capabilities. • Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Platform, Kafka, Observability, Developer Productivity, Release Engineering, and SRE to promote secure identity and access management patterns. • Mentor senior engineers, raise engineering standards, and influence architectural decisions organization-wide. • Communicate complex technical decisions clearly and align stakeholders across engineering and security domains.

What You Will Bring: • 10+ years of engineering experience, with at least 4 years in security, IAM, or distributed systems. • Deep expertise in Kubernetes, workload identity, cloud IAM (AWS, GCP, Azure), and zero-trust architectures. • Strong understanding of authentication technologies: IAM, OAuth2, OIDC, policy engines, and modern zero-trust principles. • Proven experience leading technical initiatives at the Staff or Senior Staff level across multiple teams. • Solid knowledge of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, container orchestration, and service mesh. • Exceptional communication and stakeholder-influence skills across engineering and security environments.

What Gives You an Edge: • Experience leading cross-organization security platform architecture initiatives. • A background in creating developer-focused authentication and authorization platforms.

If you're ready to lead the charge in building the future of secure data access management, we invite you to apply and join our team!

At Confluent, inclusion isn't just an initiative—it's our foundation. We celebrate diversity and strive to create spaces where everyone can thrive.