Staff Engineer - Machine Identity

Permanent, Full Time

Financial Services

Sydney - Hybrid

We're partnering with a major financial institution to find a Staff Engineer who can build the infrastructure that lets every service, API, and workload authenticate securely, without a human anywhere in the loop.

It's a hands-on build role, not an architecture-on-paper gig, so it'll suit someone who'd rather be shipping code than sitting in review meetings.

What you'll be doing:
Build and operate workload identity infrastructure at enterprise scale - provisioning, rotating, and revoking identities for services across distributed systems.
Work across every layer of the identity stack. Human IAM, app auth (OAuth/OIDC), cloud IAM (AWS/Azure/GCP), and API gateways all need to work together in practice.
Write production code in Python and Go. Review architecture, debug distributed auth failures, and mentor other engineers through code.
Decide when machine identity should replace secrets and when to use attested identities vs tokens.



Back it up with working code and production data, not slide decks.
Bring practical improvements into the team's engineering practice as identity patterns and standards evolve.

What we're looking for:
Experience building and operating workload identity infrastructure at scale. Not just administering an IAM product.
Experience across different identity layers; human IAM, app auth, cloud IAM, API gateways.
Real production coding ability in Python or Go.
Solid grasp of identity protocols, JWTs, and signing, enough to build secure identity systems on top.
Valuable judgement on machine identity vs secrets, and how to implement federation, proven through code you've written.

Nice to have:
SPIFFE/SPIRE implementation experience.
HashiCorp Vault operation or architecture.
Service mesh or API gateway auth integration.
Open-source contributions in identity projects.

Sounds engaging? Apply here!

📌 Staff Engineer Machine Identity Southern Sydney (Australia)
🏢 Preacta
📍 Australia