Staff Software Engineer I - Internal Access Management

Confluent is a company focused on transforming data movement through its innovative platform. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical vision and architecture for Internal Access Management, ensuring secure and auditable authorization across engineering systems.

Responsibilities:

• 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 and evolve scalable access-authorization workflows and lifecycle management systems using technologies such as OPA, cloud IAM policies, workload identity, and internal enforcement engines
• Strengthen security boundaries through threat modeling, defense-in-depth practices, and comprehensive access-auditing capabilities
• Partner with cross-functional teams—including Platform, Kafka, Observability, Developer Productivity, Release Engineering, and SRE—to drive adoption of secure identity and access patterns
• Mentor senior engineers, elevate engineering standards, and influence architectural decisions across the organization
• Communicate complex technical decisions clearly and align stakeholders across engineering and security

Requirements:

• 10+ years of engineering experience, with 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 track record leading multi-team technical initiatives at a Staff or Senior Staff level
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, container orchestration, and service mesh
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-influence skills across engineering and security domains
• Experience leading cross-org security platform architecture initiatives
• Background in building developer-focused authentication and authorization platforms