Principal Engineer, Customer Identity Access Management

Principal Engineer - Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM)

Location: Denver, CO; New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA

Department: Core Systems Engineering

Posting Open Date: May 12, 2026

Anticipated Posting Close Date: May 30, 2026

What You'll Do:

• Lead the technical direction, architecture, and evolution of Fastly’s CIAM systems and services.
• Design and build secure, scalable solutions for authentication, authorization, identity lifecycle, and related platform capabilities.
• Partner with engineering, product, and security teams to define roadmaps, align priorities, and address technical risks early.
• Drive adoption of modern, standards‑based identity patterns and best practices across teams and systems.
• Improve the reliability, security, and maintainability of identity‑related services through strong architectural decisions and operational rigor.
• Mentor engineers across the organization, helping raise the quality of technical design, implementation, and collaboration.
• Contribute to an inclusive engineering culture grounded in curiosity, pragmatism, and continuous improvement.
• Participate in on‑call support rotation as needed.

What We're Looking For:

• Significant experience designing and operating authentication and authorization systems in production environments. Most Principals at Fastly have at least 10 years of related 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 lead complex technical initiatives across multiple teams and influence engineering direction at senior levels.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation and align diverse stakeholders.
• Track record of mentoring and growing other engineers, both within your domain of expertise and more broadly across engineering.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Keycloak
• Production experience implementing Role and Attribute‑based Access control systems
• Experience with Go, Java, or Ruby

Work Hours: This position will require you to be available during core business hours and occasional nights and weekends as needed for on‑call support.

Work Location(s) & Travel Requirements: The preferred hybrid 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. We are also willing to consider highly qualified remote candidates in the United States. This position will require travel as required by your manager.

Salary: The estimated salary range for this position is $246,550 to $295,000. 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: We care about you. Fastly works hard to create a positive environment for our employees, and we think your life outside of work is important too. We support our teams with great benefits that start on the first day of your employment with Fastly. We offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance. Family planning, mental health support along with Employee Assistance Program, Insurance (Life, Disability, and Accident), an open vacation policy and up to 18 days of accrued paid sick leave are there to help support our employees. We also offer 401(k) (including company match) and an Employee Stock Purchase Program. For 2026, we offer 11 paid local holidays, 12 paid company wellness days.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Fastly is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity and to providing employees with a safe and welcoming work environment free of discrimination and harassment. Our employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, family or parental status, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.

Consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and federal or state disability laws, Fastly will provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact your Recruiter, or the Fastly Employee Relations team at candidateaccommodations@fastly.com or 501‑287‑4901.

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