Authentication Engineer

Headquarters: Remote
URL: https://www.toptal.com/

Summary

We are the next-generation digital identity wallet that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with us once and seamlessly log in across websites without needing to create a new login and re-verify. Over 140 million users
experience streamlined login and identity verification with us at 20 federal agencies and 44 state agencies

General Information

Onsite Location: Mountain View, CA OR McLean, VA (Onsite 5 days per week)

We are seeking a Software Engineer to join the Wallet - Authentication team, where we build
the core sign-in, registration, and account management experiences that over 140 million
members rely on to access the our identity wallet.

As a Software Engineer III, you will work end-to-end across our authentication stack — building
features that balance security, usability, and trust at scale. Your work will sit at the intersection of
identity, security, and consumer experience, directly shaping how millions of people prove and access who they are online.

Key Responsibilities

• Build & Ship Authentication Features: Build, maintain, and improve the ID.me Wallet
  authentication experience — sign-in, registration, MFA, account recovery, password reset, and MyWallet. Independently drive small-to-medium features end-to-end from design through deployment, collaborating closely with Product, Design, and Security to translate requirements into well-tested, production-ready code.

• Security, Risk & Reliability: Own and evolve the team's real-time risk engine and its integration across authentication flows — detecting and mitigating credential attacks, account takeover, and abuse while preserving a low-friction experience for legitimate members.

• Apply security best practices as a first-class concern in every feature you ship, and help raise the bar for authentication reliability, observability, and incident response across the team's services.

• Code Quality & Engineering Craft: Write high-quality, maintainable code with strong
  test coverage, following team best practices around code reviews, CI/CD, and
  documentation.

• Contribute to the health of the codebase by identifying and addressing technical debt and improving shared components.

• Third-Party & Internal Integrations: Integrate with MFA providers, email/SMS delivery
  services, internal identity services, and downstream relying parties. Proactively raise issues or opportunities discovered during integration work.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product, Design, Security, Identity, and
  adjacent engineering teams to deliver cohesive auth experiences. Participate actively in planning, retrospectives, and cross-team discussions — bringing your perspective to help shape the team's roadmap.

Requirements

Required Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent
  practical experience).

• 3+ years of professional software development experience with a strong emphasis on full-stack web engineering.

• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tooling (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor)
  demonstrated by at least one year of daily use, in addition to a commitment to an AI-first engineering culture that leverages these tools to maximize code quality, test coverage, and engineering velocity.

• Experience with authentication and identity standards such as OAuth2, OpenID
  Connect, SAML, or FIDO2/WebAuthn.
  Experience building or contributing to fraud detection, real-time risk engines, or abuse
  mitigation systems.

• Proficiency in a modern server-side web framework (e.g., Ruby on Rails, Django,
  Laravel), with hands-on experience building and operating production web applications.

• Demonstrated ability to independently ship well-tested, production-quality features with
  minimal oversight.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with a track record of working effectively across Product, Design, and Engineering.

• Familiarity with security best practices for credential handling — password storage,
  session management, token issuance, and rate limiting.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with React or other modern frontend frameworks for building user
  experiences.

• Comfort working in a fast-moving product environment with iterative releases and A/B
  testing.

• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and performance
  Startup or high-growth company experience with a strong bias toward execution

To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/toptal-authentication-engineer