Staff Software Engineer – Trust Service Team

Company Overview

ID.me is the next-generation digital identity wallet that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with ID.me once and seamlessly login across websites without having to create a new login and verify their identity again. Over 152 million users experience streamlined login and identity verification with ID.me at 20 federal agencies, 45 state government agencies, and 70+ healthcare organizations. More than 600+ consumer brands use ID.me to verify communities and user segments to honor service and build more authentic relationships. ID.me’s technology meets the federal standards for consumer authentication set by the Commerce Department and is approved as a NIST 800-63-3 IAL2 / AAL2 credential service provider by the Kantara Initiative. ID.me is committed to “No Identity Left Behind” to enable all people to have a secure digital identity. To learn more, visit https://network.id.me/.

ID.me is a full-time, in-office culture. Unless a specific job description explicitly states otherwise, all roles are on-site five days per week at one of our offices in McLean, VA; Mountain View, CA; New York City, NY; or Tampa, FL. Certain roles - such as field-based sales or other remote-by-design positions - may have different work arrangements as noted in their individual postings.

At ID.me, we embrace the thoughtful use of AI tools in our daily work and there are even occasions where we leverage AI in our hiring process. However, during the interview process, we want to understand your individual skills and experiences. Therefore, we have guidelines on how AI can be appropriately used during your application and interviews which can be found here.

Role Overview

ID.me is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Trust Service team, where we build and operate the core infrastructure that decides how much trust to extend to every identity claim made by over 152 million members.

The Trust Service owns the Trust Graph,  a structured, queryable record of identity inspections that captures what was verified and how reliably it was verified. Every downstream access decision at federal agencies, state governments, healthcare organizations, and consumer brands depends on the trust data our service produces. The Trust Service is a foundational platform API: its correctness, availability, and contract stability directly affect every team that builds on top of it.

As a Staff Engineer, you will be the technical anchor for this service. You will drive architectural decisions, set the standard for correctness and reliability on a system where errors have real identity and access consequences, and lead complex cross-team initiatives that span the identity and authentication platform. You will shape how the trust data model evolves, own the API contracts that downstream teams bind to, and raise the bar for engineering quality, security, and operational excellence across the team.

Key Responsibilities

Architect & Lead Trust Graph Systems: Own the technical vision and architecture for the Trust Service - the data model, the API surface, the query and write patterns, and the operational characteristics of the service at scale. Drive architectural decisions with a long view: make the system more correct, more observable, and easier to evolve without breaking consumers.

API Contract & Data Model Stewardship: Own the REST API contracts and inspection data model that downstream services, identity workflows, and product teams depend on. Lead decisions about versioning strategy, backwards compatibility, and the principles that govern how new inspection types and identity providers are introduced safely. Hold the line on contract integrity across teams.

Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as the technical anchor for the team. Setting the standard for code quality, system design, and engineering best practices. Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and architectural guidance. Elevate how the team thinks about correctness, observability, and long-term maintainability.

Cross-Team Collaboration: Partner with Identity, Authentication, Fraud, Workflow, Platform, and Compliance teams whose products are built on top of the trust chain. Drive alignment on shared data model decisions and multi-team API changes. Be the authoritative technical voice for what the Trust Service can and should do when adjacent teams bring new requirements.

Reliability, Performance & Security: Own the availability and correctness of trust reads and writes at production scale. Lead initiatives around observability, alert hygiene, query performance, capacity planning, and incident response for a service that downstream teams depend on continuously. Ensure the service meets the security and compliance requirements of a NIST 800-63-3 IAL2/AAL2 credentialing system.

Roadmap Influence: Provide technical input into team and platform roadmap planning. Identify and advocate for engineering investments in reliability, data model flexibility, API ergonomics, and developer experience  that improve the Trust Service as a platform and raise engineering velocity across the teams that depend on it.

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).

8+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating high-availability, correctness-critical backend services.

Proven ability to lead complex, cross-team technical initiatives from definition through delivery with minimal oversight.

Deep comfort with relational databases - designing schemas, writing complex queries, reasoning about query performance, and managing safe schema evolution in production.

Experience designing and versioning REST APIs and owning the contracts that downstream teams and SDKs depend on.

Proficiency with AI-assisted development tooling (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) with a commitment to an AI-first engineering culture that maximizes team quality and velocity.

Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience influencing technical direction across engineering, product, and security stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

Deep experience with Java or another JVM language, including modern language features applied to production systems.

Familiarity with graph or highly relational data models - entity relationships, traversal patterns, and the tradeoffs between different read/write shapes at scale.

Comfort reasoning about identity trust decisions: what it means for an identity claim to be verified, how different inspection methods vary in reliability, and how temporal decay or expiration affects downstream access.

Experience with identity standards such as NIST 800-63-3, OAuth2, or OpenID Connect, particularly in the context of federal or regulated-industry deployments.

Proven ability to own and evolve platform APIs consumed by multiple internal teams - understanding the full lifecycle of a contract from design through versioning and deprecation.

Track record of improving engineering culture through documentation, technical standards, architectural review, and developer experience improvements.

Experience working in regulated industries such as government, healthcare, or financial services.

Company Overview

ID.me is the next-generation digital identity wallet that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with ID.me once and seamlessly log in across websites without needing to create a new login and re-verify. Over 152 million users experience streamlined login and identity verification with ID.me at 20 federal agencies, 45 state government agencies, and 70+ healthcare organizations. More than 600+ consumer brands use ID.me to verify communities and user segments to honor service and build more authentic relationships. ID.me's technology meets the federal standards for consumer authentication set by the Commerce Department and is approved as a NIST 800-63-3 IAL2 / AAL2 credential service provider by the Kantara Initiative. ID.me is committed to "No Identity Left Behind" to enable all people to have a secure digital identity. To learn more, visit https://network.id.me/.

The annual base salary listed does not include a company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity and benefits which will be determined based on experience, skills, education, relevant training, geographic location and role. 

ID.me offers comprehensive medical, dental, vision, health savings account, flexible spending accounts (medical, limited purpose, dependent care, commuter benefit accounts), basic and voluntary life and AD&D insurance, 401(k) with company match, parental leave, ability to participate in unlimited paid time off subject to the terms and conditions of the PTO policy, including 8 company wide holidays, short and long-term disability insurance, accident and critical illness insurance, referral bonus policy, employee assistance program, pet insurance, travel assistant program, wellbeing and childcare discounts, benefit advocates, and a learning and development benefit.

Final offers may vary from the amount listed based on qualifications, professional experiences, skills, education, relevant training, geographic location, and other job related factors.

Mountain View, CA Pay Range

$194,000—$253,000 USD

ID.me maintains a work environment free from discrimination, where employees are treated with dignity and respect. All ID.me employees share in the responsibility for fulfilling our commitment to equal employment opportunity. ID.me does not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, 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. ID.me adheres to these principles in all aspects of employment, including recruitment, hiring, training, compensation, promotion, benefits, social and recreational programs, and discipline. In addition, ID.me's policy is to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified employees who have protected disabilities to the extent required by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances where a particular employee works. Upon request we will provide you with more information about such accommodations.

Please review our Privacy Policy, including our CCPA policy, at id.me/privacy. If you provide ID.me with any personally identifiable information you confirm that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions set out in our Privacy Policy.

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