Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

Dive in and do the best work of your career at DigitalOcean. Journey alongside a strong community of top talent who are relentless in their drive to build the simplest scalable cloud. If you have a growth mindset, naturally like to think big and bold, and are energized by the fast-paced environment of a true industry disruptor, you'll find your place here. We value winning together—while learning, having fun, and making a profound difference for the dreamers and builders in the world.

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer (IC6) to join our Customer Trust & Engineering organization as the technical owner of Identity & Access Management and Key Management Services. IAM and KMS are the bedrock of trust at DigitalOcean; our services sit in the critical path of every request, authorizing billions of transactions per second with single-digit millisecond latency, and securing the cryptographic material that protects every customer workload on the platform.

As an IC6, you won't just influence existing systems - you will define what our identity and key management platforms become over the next two to three years, and lead the engineers who build them. You will drive architectural strategy across multiple teams, resolve cross-cutting technical challenges, and set the standard for how DigitalOcean thinks about identity at hyperscale. If you are passionate about distributed systems, cryptographic security, and building foundational infrastructure that millions of developers depend on, this is the role for you.

What You'll Do:

Own the Platform Vision: Define and drive the multi-year technical roadmap for IAM and KMS including authentication, authorization, secrets management, and cryptographic key lifecycle across DigitalOcean's global, multi-tenant cloud platform.

Architect for Hyperscale: Design high-availability, low-latency identity and key management services in Go that handle massive, sustained load across global regions with strong consistency and full auditability.

Lead Next-Gen Identity: Architect secure token exchange patterns and identity context injection for agentic AI workflows, building the IAM foundations that underpin DigitalOcean's emerging AI/ML platform offerings.

Evolve Key Management: Design and deliver a robust, multi-tenant KMS, including envelope encryption, customer-managed key patterns, and HSM-backed key material, that gives customers deep, fine-grained control over their data security posture.

Solve Complex AuthZ at Scale: Drive the evolution of our Policy Engine (Rego/OPA) to support advanced resource-level permissions, dynamic scoping, network-aware access conditions, and the complex authorization demands of agentic workflows.

Drive Cross-Team Impact: Partner with Inference, Billing, DOKS, and Platform Security to resolve architectural gaps that span multiple teams. Serve as the connective tissue between identity and the broader cloud platform and ensure security is an enabler of developer velocity, not an obstacle.

Set Engineering Standards: Establish cryptographic and identity engineering standards adopted org-wide. Lead design reviews for changes with cross-cutting platform risk and author RFCs that shape DigitalOcean's technical direction.

Mentor & Grow the Organization: Mentor and develop senior and mid-level engineers across IAM and adjacent teams. Conduct deep code reviews, model architectural thinking, and build a culture of security-first engineering.

What You'll Add to DigitalOcean:

• Experience: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4+ years focused on Identity (AuthN/AuthZ), Key Management, or high-scale distributed systems in a cloud or IaaS environment
• Language Expert: Expert-level proficiency in Go and deep experience with gRPC microservices architecture
• Identity Specialist: Deep knowledge of identity protocols (OIDC, OAuth2, SAML, SCIM) and access control models (RBAC, ABAC, PBAC), with a track record of delivering these at cloud scale
• Cryptography & KMS: Hands-on experience designing or operating key management infrastructure, including envelope encryption, HSM integration, and BYOK/CMEK patterns
• Distributed Systems: Proven ability to build systems that handle consensus, replication, and partitioning at scale with strong reliability and observability
• Cloud Native: Deep experience with Kubernetes, SQL (MySQL), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• Technical Leadership: Demonstrated track record of driving ambiguous, multi-team platform initiatives from problem definition through to shipped, production capability
• Communication: Ability to write crisp RFCs, present architectural strategy to senior leadership, and align diverse teams around a shared technical direction

Nice to Have

• Experience with SPIFFE/SPIRE or workload identity federation
• Familiarity with secrets management platforms (e.g., HashiCorp Vault)
• Contributions to open-source identity or cryptography projects

Compensation Range:

• $235,200 - $294,000

*This is a remote role

Why You'll Like Working for DigitalOcean

• We innovate with purpose. You'll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions.
• We prioritize career development. At DO, you'll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses to support their continued growth and development.
• We care about your well-being. Regardless of your location, we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy, to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide, specific benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.
• We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company and individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program.
• DigitalOcean is an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Application Limit: You may apply to a maximum of 3 positions within any 180-day period. This policy promotes better role-candidate matching and encourages thoughtful applications where your qualifications align most strongly.