Principal Engineer Person & Trust Platform

About the role

ID.me is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer to serve as the technical authority across the Person and Trust platforms — the systems that define who a person is and how much confidence ID.me can place in that identity. You will own the data model strategy, API contracts, and long-term architecture across the Person API, the Trust Service, and the Inspection Catalog, along with the verification and validation evidence that connects them.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the data model strategy and long-term architecture across the Person API, Trust Service, and Inspection Catalog, keeping all three as the authoritative source of truth for identity, evidence, and confidence.
• Own the API contracts across the domain, including versioning, compatibility, and governance standards that internal and external consumers depend on.
• Set technical direction and design standards for the domain.
• Mentor staff and senior engineers, raising the bar for data modeling, API design, and trust architecture across the organization — and filling the domain leadership gap with intentional, lasting technical ownership.
• Lead the modernization and consolidation of legacy identity data into a scalable, modular set of services and contracts.
• Ensure the security, privacy, and compliance of Person, Trust, and Inspection Catalog data.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time as a recognized technical authority for a complex domain spanning multiple systems.
• Deep expertise in data modeling and graph data structures, including designing schemas and relationships that remain correct, performant, and auditable at scale.
• Proven track record designing and owning APIs and data contracts for source-of-truth systems used by internal and external consumers.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical strategy and drive alignment across engineering teams without direct authority.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with graph databases and the modeling tradeoffs between graph and relational representations of connected identity data — this is central to how we represent Person-to-SSN, Person-to-Face, and Person-to-Legal relationships.
• Experience modeling evidence and confidence scoring into a coherent, queryable record — specifically connecting inspection evidence from the Inspection Catalog to trust decisions in the Trust Service.
• Experience building or owning systems that model, store, and maintain person or entity attributes and relationships at scale.
• Expertise in NIST 800-63 IAL2/AAL2 standards, including evidence requirements, verification methods, and identity lifecycle management.
• Experience with cloud-native infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
• Experience operating in regulated environments (security, compliance, or data privacy requirements).
• Familiarity with emerging identity and credentialing standards (e.g., Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers, OIDC extensions).
• Excellent communication skills and a track record of influencing technical direction across an organization.