Staff Software Engineer - Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM)

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. Fastly’s edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the Internet. The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet, to be programmable, and to support agile software development. Fastly’s customers include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including GitHub, Yelp, Paramount, and JetBlue.

About the role

Join our dynamic Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) team as a Staff Software Engineer and play a pivotal role in building cutting-edge solutions that centralize and simplify how organizations manage user identities and profile data. Our CIAM team is committed to empowering customers with control over user access by providing advanced access control mechanisms, innovative authentication methods, progressive profiling, and a unified identity experience. We are looking for passionate, highly skilled software engineers to join our team and be an integral part of our mission.

Responsibilities

• Design and build secure, scalable identity services supporting authentication, authorization, identity lifecycle, and related platform capabilities.
• Lead implementation of complex technical initiatives from design through production, balancing long-term architecture with practical delivery.
• Serve as the technical lead for one or more core areas of the CIAM platform, guiding architecture, reviewing designs, and helping teams make sound technical decisions.
• Partner with engineering, product, and security to shape implementation plans, prioritize technical investments, and identify risks early.
• Break down ambiguous technical problems into practical, incremental solutions while maintaining a high bar for engineering quality.
• Champion modern, standards-based identity patterns and help teams adopt engineering best practices across the CIAM platform.
• Improve the reliability, security, and maintainability of identity-related services through strong architectural decisions and operational rigor.
• Mentor engineers within the CIAM organization through design reviews, technical guidance, and collaborative problem solving.
• Contribute to an inclusive engineering culture grounded in curiosity, pragmatism, and continuous improvement.
• Participate in on-call support rotation as needed.

Requirements

• Significant experience designing and operating authentication and authorization systems in production environments. Staff engineers at Fastly typically have 7+ years of relevant experience.
• Deep understanding of identity and access standards and technologies such as OIDC, OAuth, SAML, SCIM, JWT, and SSO.
• Experience with service-to-service authentication and secure communication patterns in distributed systems.
• Strong background in software architecture and system design, especially in areas of scalability, performance, reliability, and security.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership across multiple teams through architectural guidance, delivery of complex initiatives, and collaborative influence.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation and align diverse stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Go, Java, or Ruby
• Experience with Keycloak
• Production experience implementing Role and Attribute-based Access control systems
• Experience designing secure identity systems with strong consideration for authentication threats, authorization models, and operational resilience.

Schedule

This position will require you to be available during core business hours and occasional nights and weekends as necessary to support on-call coverage.

Work Location

The preferred locations for this position are: San Francisco, CA; Denver, CO; New York, NY. Fastly currently embraces a largely hybrid model for most roles which allows employees flexibility to split their time between the office and home. There is a strong preference for Hybrid near a local office. However, we may be willing to consider highly qualified remote candidates within the US. This position may require travel quarterly to align on technical designs and direction.

Pay

The estimated salary range for this position is $211,370 to $253,644. Starting salary may vary based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as experience, skills, qualifications, and location. This role may be eligible to participate in Fastly’s equity and discretionary bonus programs.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Family planning and mental health support along with Employee Assistance Program.
• Insurance (Life, Disability, and Accident).
• Flexible Vacation policy and up to 18 days of accrued paid sick leave.
• 401(k) (including company match) and an Employee Stock Purchase Program.
• 11 paid local holidays and 12 paid company wellness days for 2026.

Why Fastly?

• We have a huge impact. Fastly is a small company with a big reach. Not only do our customers have a tremendous user base, but we also support a growing number of open source projects and initiatives.
• We value diversity. Growing and maintaining our inclusive and diverse team matters to us. We are committed to being a company where our employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work and have the ability to be successful — every day.
• We are passionate. Fastly is chock full of passionate people and we’re not ‘one size fits all’. Fastly employs authors, pilots, skiers, parents (of humans and animals), makeup geeks, coffee connoisseurs, and more.