Engineering Manager, Authentication Platform

Job Description

Job Description

Are you ready to shape the future of authentication? Join 1Kosmos and help lead the next wave in identity assurance and passwordless innovation.

1Kosmos is driving the future of identity security, empowering organizations to eliminate passwords and establish trust at every step of the identity lifecycle. As a vibrant team of innovators, we develop advanced authentication solutions trusted by some of the world’s leading brands. Join us as we create a passwordless world and set new standards for digital identity assurance.

Your Title: Engineering Manager, Authentication Platform

Your Location: Hybrid – Edison, NJ HQ

You Report to: SVP of Engineering and Chief Architect

Compensation: $180,000 or more depending upon experience

At 1Kosmos, we are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead technical execution across our Authentication (Auth) Platform, the passwordless, phishing-resistant authentication, SSO, and access services that sit in the login path for millions of users. This is for someone who stays close to the code, brings sound technical judgment, and turns product requirements into secure, highly available, and shippable solutions.

You will guide a distributed team of 4-6 engineers based in India while working closely with Product and the Head of Engineering from our Edison office. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: you will set architectural direction, make design decisions, remove delivery blockers, uphold release quality, and step into the codebase when the team or situation calls for it.

You bring an “always sleeveless” mindset: no issue is too small to investigate, no production incident is beneath you, and no architectural decision should be made without understanding the system that exists today.

What you will do:

• Steer architecture and design: Understand the existing Auth Platform deeply — authentication flows, identity federation, session and token services, and integrations and guide the team toward technically sound designs that align with current capabilities and the longer-term architectural direction.
• Turn product needs into executable engineering work: Partner with Product early to shape requirements, clarify trade-off s, sequence work, and translate feature requests into practical, well-defined engineering plans.
• Own Auth Platform delivery: Keep incoming work organized, priorities clear, dependencies visible, and commitments on track across passwordless login, MFA, SSO, and customer integrations.
• Lead through technical credibility: Participate actively in design discussions, code reviews, debugging, and technical problem-solving. Step into the codebase and contribute directly when needed to validate an approach, unblock a critical effort, or resolve a production issue.
• Set the release-quality bar: Establish and uphold standards for design review, code quality, test readiness, performance, security, standards compliance, and release decisions.
• Own production outcomes: Authentication is in the critical path of every user session. Participate directly in incident response, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions for Auth services, with a focus on availability and login latency.
• Build secure, reliable systems: Drive sound engineering decisions across Node.js microservices, identity protocols, cloud-based SaaS deployments, Kubernetes, AWS, observability, performance, and platform resilience.
• Guide and unblock the team: Provide daily technical direction, remove obstacles, facilitate effective delivery discussions, and help engineers make good decisions without becoming a status only manager.
• Bring a point of view: Make timely, well-reasoned technical decisions amid ambiguity, clearly communicate trade-offs, and constructively challenge approaches when needed.
• Foster collaborative execution: Work closely with Product, QA, Security, and engineering peers to create a low-ego environment where ownership, rigor, and delivery matter.

What you bring:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience , including recent experience guiding technical delivery and engineering teams in a hands-on capacity.
• Identity and access management depth: Experience building or operating authentication, SSO, or IAM platforms in production.
• Proven hands-on technical leadership: Able to lead by example through architecture, code reviews, debugging, technical decision-making, and direct contribution when a critical need arises.
• Sound technical judgment: You form an informed point of view, explain trade-offs clearly, and make decisions when the answer is not obvious.
• Demonstrated delivery leadership: Experience organizing engineering work, identifying dependencies and risks, unblocking teams, and delivering quality capabilities predictably.
• Strong quality and operational rigor: Experience with design and code reviews, automated testing, observability, incident response, root-cause analysis, and release readiness for high availability services.
• Security-first mindset: Practical understanding of secure software development, threat modeling, data boundaries, platform security, and performance considerations in enterprise SaaS.
• Collaborative technical leadership: Ability to influence through technical depth, clarity, and follow through while working effectively across US and India-based teams.
• Willingness to work from Edison, NJ three days per week and maintain meaningful working overlap with the India-based Auth engineering team.

Technical Skills:

• Programming Stack: Node.js / JavaScript / TypeScript - Deep, practical experience building, debugging, reviewing, and supporting production Node.js services. Node.js is the primary language across our microservices environment.
• Java and Go: Working knowledge of Java and Go is secondary but not mandatory.
• Identity protocols and standards: Strong working knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML 2.0; FIDO2 / WebAuthn and passkeys; JWT and token lifecycle management (issuance, refresh, revocation); and NIST 800-63B authenticator assurance levels.
• Authentication and access: Experience with passwordless and multi-factor authentication, session management, adaptive / risk-based authentication, and authorization models (RBAC/ABAC).
• Enterprise identity integrations: Familiarity with directory services (LDAP, Active Directory, Entra ID), SCIM provisioning, and integrating with IdPs and service providers such as Okta, Ping, and Microsoft.
• Applied cryptography: Practical understanding of PKI, certificates, key management, signing and encryption, and secure secrets handling.
• Microservices and distributed systems: Strong experience with service-oriented architecture, API design, inter-service communication, resiliency patterns, scalability, and performance.
• Cloud-based SaaS platforms: Demonstrated experience building and operating secure, scalable, multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
• Cloud Stack: AWS, GCP, Azure - Strong working knowledge of AWS services, cloud deployment patterns, security, monitoring, reliability, and cost-aware operational practices. Hands-on experience with containerized workloads, Docker, Kubernetes, deployment practices, and operational troubleshooting.
• CI/CD and release engineering: Experience with automated build, test, deployment, and rollback practices that support predictable and reliable releases.
• Performance engineering: Experience diagnosing and improving latency, throughput, scalability, and reliability in high-volume, latency-sensitive distributed systems.

Who thrives here:

• Builders who stay close to real technical problems and lead by example.
• Engineers who form a clear point of view, make informed decisions, and take responsibility for outcomes.
• Problem solvers who can move between architecture, delivery details, debugging, and production incidents.
• Pragmatic collaborators who understand existing systems before proposing change.
• People energized by security, performance, reliability, and protecting users from identity fraud.
• Leaders who earn trust through technical credibility, clarity, and follow-through.

What we offer:

• Opportunity to build and lead a critical function at a high-growth Series B startup
• Competitive salary and equity package
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Unlimited PTO Policy
• Collaborative, fast-paced culture where your impact is immediate and visible