Engineering Manager - IAM (Go)

Bestow is a leading vertical technology platform serving some of the largest and most innovative life insurers. Our platform unifies the fragmented, legacy value chain, enabling carriers to launch products in weeks instead of years. Carriers choose us to scale and operate at unprecedented speed, powered by AI and automation. Bestow is building the infrastructure that helps an entire industry move faster, reach more people, and deliver on its promise.

About The Team

The Engineering team is responsible for all technology for Bestow and the Bestow Platform. We serve employees, consumers, and enterprise customers. Our major functional teams are product engineering, infrastructure, IT, data & analytics, and program management. Engineering works closely with product management and design to define and prioritize the product roadmap.

What You'll Do

• Technical Leadership
  • Stay in the code and actively participate in system design and architecture decisions (20% hands-on coding).
  • Review pull requests regularly, raising the bar on code quality.
  • Own your team's quality standards: test coverage, documentation, code review practice, and automation/quality gates.
  • Debug and troubleshoot alongside engineers, leading through hard diagnostic work.
  • Identify technical debt, build remediation plans, and advocate for time to address it.
• IAM Initiative Ownership
  • Lead the evolution of the authorization model to support multi-tenant enterprise customers at scale.
  • Architect separation of authentication and authorization for independent scaling, caching, and policy enforcement.
  • Design a token strategy balancing security, partner flexibility, and platform cost; manage vendor relationships.
  • Build automated user provisioning/de-provisioning to eliminate engineering intervention for partner onboarding.
  • Solve partner-specific requirements: biometric re-authentication, extended session lifetimes, layered access policies, and regulatory audit needs.
• Operational Health And On-Call
  • Participate in a weekly on-call rotation covering authentication and authorization services.
  • Treat rotation health as a priority: right-sized alerting, current runbooks, and operational fixes.
  • Own observability, monitoring, and alerting for your services; track uptime/incident metrics and lead incident response.
• Building And Developing The Team
  • Recruit, interview, and hire engineers; partner with Talent Acquisition on pipeline and calibration.
  • Own the onboarding experience for new engineers, including 30/60/90-day plans.
  • Hold regular 1:1s focused on growth; build individual development plans tied to career goals.
  • Coach engineers on technical and professional skills; assign stretch assignments.
  • Build an inclusive team where productive disagreement is encouraged; address conflict directly.
• Performance And Delivery
  • Set clear, measurable expectations; give documented, actionable feedback; run fair performance reviews.
  • Address underperformance with empathy and urgency; raise issues early.
  • Translate product requirements into technical plans; estimate capacity/timelines honestly.
  • Own a realistic team roadmap and make daily prioritization decisions.
  • Track delivery metrics; report in monthly operating reviews and propose solutions for dips.
• Vision And Stakeholder Partnership
  • Set a technical north star for IAM; execute incrementally.
  • Translate company strategy into team-level work via RFCs, PRD input, and scoped tickets.
  • Communicate status, progress, and risk transparently; escalate with proposed solutions.
  • Explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences, including leadership and external partners.
  • Connect team work to business outcomes; make cost/benefit trade-offs explicit.
• AI Adoption And Innovation
  • Model effective use of AI coding tools; set standards for agent-generated changes (review, test, attribution).
  • Level up team AI practice through workshops, shared prompting patterns, and continuous iteration.
  • Ensure security and quality best practices for AI tool usage.
  • Create room for experimentation and calculated risk; treat failures as learning opportunities.

Who You Are

An Engineering Manager at Bestow is a highly technical leader who works at the intersection of people and technology. You balance hands-on contribution with people leadership and find satisfaction in both.

Requirements

• Core Requirements
  • 8+ years of professional software experience, including 1+ years directly managing a team of Software Engineers while staying hands-on in the code.
  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
  • Professional experience with Go or another statically typed backend language (clear path to Go).
  • Production experience with cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes or comparable container orchestration.
  • Experience with PostgreSQL or another relational database; comfortable writing ANSI SQL.
  • Experience designing modern distributed systems and APIs (Docker, Protocol Buffers, OpenAPI, or Swagger).
  • End-to-end ownership mentality: high organizational standards + excellent communication to build/empower teams.
• IAM And Authentication Experience (Highly Desired)
  • Identity provider depth: hands-on experience with Auth0, Okta, or similar (tenant/organization configuration, connection management, custom logic).
  • OAuth 2.0 and OIDC: working knowledge of flows, token types, JWT validation, and token lifecycle (caching, rotation, revocation).
  • Multi-tenant architecture: tenant isolation, partner-specific branding, SSO configuration, and audit logging for regulated industries.
  • Authorization patterns: RBAC, ABAC, or policy-based access control; separating authentication from authorization.
  • Enterprise SSO and provisioning: integrating SAML 2.0/OIDC for B2B partnerships and SCIM for automated provisioning.
• How You Work
  • Deep understanding of the full software development lifecycle (inception through maintenance, CI, release strategy).
  • Hands-on experience with agentic coding tools (Claude Code preferred; Cursor/GitHub Copilot transferable).
  • Track key metrics and consistently meet Service Level Agreements.
  • Break down ambiguous technical problems; identify risks early.
  • Ability to pick up and ship work in the team's codebases as needed.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity based on role.
• Flexible paid time off and parental leave programs.
• 100% paid-premium option for medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Lifestyle stipend to support physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing.
• Flexible work-from-home policy; open to remote or hybrid (Dallas office available).

Recent awards: Best Place for Working Parents (2023–2025), Great Place to Work Certified (2022–2025), Built In Best Places to Work (2022–2025), Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Texas and Financial Services/Insurance (2022–2024).