Senior Software Development Engineer, Authorization

About the role

Remitly's Authorization Team builds the secure, scalable, and high-performance access control systems that protect every customer interaction across Remitly's platform. As a security engineering expert on this team, you will own the design and evolution of our authorization infrastructure — the systems that determine what every user, service, and partner can and cannot do. You will become a product expert and have the opportunity to influence key decisions that shape the charters you work in. You'll collaborate with engineers, product managers, and compliance experts to deliver solutions that enforce least-privilege access, meet regulatory requirements, and empower our customers to trust Remitly as their preferred financial platform.

Responsibilities

• Design, maintain and own authorization infrastructure — including access control frameworks, policy engines, and entitlement systems — ensuring correctness, reliability, and high-performance at scale.
• Lead threat modeling and security design reviews for authorization systems and their integrations, applying adversarial thinking to stress-test access control decisions before they reach production.
• Define and enforce security architecture standards across engineering teams that consume authorization services, acting as a trusted security authority and partner.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and compliance teams to define and deliver technical solutions from concept through launch and support.
• Develop and improve RBAC, ABAC, and policy-as-code models, driving high standards of quality, maintainability, and observability.
• Proactively identify and remediate security vulnerabilities in access control systems, including privilege escalation risks, insecure direct object references, and broken access control patterns.
• Contribute to the team's technical strategy, code reviews, and ongoing process improvements.
• Champion Remitly's values by fostering inclusion, mentoring peers, and elevating engineering practices.
• Support customers onboarding onto the Authorization platform.

Requirements

• A BS in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.
• 8+ years of experience in backend and/or distributed systems engineering (e.g., Java, Go, Node.js, TypeScript).
• Deep expertise in access control models, authorization system design, and applied security engineering — not just as a user of security services, but as an owner and builder of them.
• Hands-on experience with authorization frameworks and access control patterns, including RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, and policy languages such as Cedar or OPA/Rego.
• A track record of conducting threat modeling and security design reviews for distributed systems, with familiarity with common attack patterns against authorization systems (e.g., privilege escalation, IDOR, broken access control).
• Experience designing and operating high-scale, low-latency authorization decision systems where correctness and availability are both non-negotiable.
• Experience collaborating with product, engineering, and compliance partners to deliver high-impact, security-critical solutions.
• The ability to deliver high-quality, well-tested code, and a track record of solving challenging security problems with thoughtful trade-offs.

Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.

Skills

• Access control models, authorization system design, and applied security engineering.
• Threat modeling and security design reviews for distributed systems.
• RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, and policy languages such as Cedar or OPA/Rego.
• High-scale, low-latency authorization decision systems.
• Collaboration with product, engineering, and compliance partners.
• Delivery of high-quality, well-tested code.
• Solving challenging security problems with thoughtful trade-offs.

Benefits

• Four weeks vacation
• Health Benefits
• Mental Health & Family Forming Benefits
• RRSP plan with company match
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)
• Life Insurance & Disability
• Continuing education and travel benefits