# Principal Tech Lead Manager

**Company:** [Idme](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/idme)
**Location:** Mountain View, CA
**Role:** Engineering Management
**Salary:** $215k – $275k/yr
**Experience:** 15+ years
**Skills:** Graph Databases, Neo4J, Amazon Neptune, Graph Data Modeling, API Design, Api Contracts, OIDC, Oauth 2.0, SAML, Nist 800-63, GCP, AWS, Azure, Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers
**Posted:** 2026-07-01

> Principal-level Technical Lead Manager owning architecture, delivery, and a 6-10 person engineering team for ID.me's Trust Graph, Work Profiles, and expanding Authentication domains. Requires 15+ years software engineering (with graph modeling and enterprise identity expertise) plus 5+ years people management.

## Job Description

## Key Responsibilities
- Own the technical direction, architecture, and delivery across Trust Graph and Work Profiles, with growing scope into Authentication.
- Directly manage a team of 6–10 engineers: hiring, development, performance, and team health.
- Set and enforce API contract standards and data model integrity across your domain, ensuring the systems you own are reliable dependencies for the rest of the platform.
- Drive the design and evolution of graph-based representations of identity relationships, trust signals, and enterprise work profile structures.
- Own the engineering roadmap for your domain in partnership with Product, translating strategic priorities into a sequenced, executable plan.
- Mentor and develop engineers at all levels, raising the technical bar for graph data modeling, API design, and enterprise identity patterns across the org.
- Ensure security, privacy, and compliance requirements are built into the fabric of Trust Graph and Work Profiles, not bolted on.
- Contribute to platform-wide architecture decisions and represent your domain’s needs and constraints in cross-functional technical forums.

## Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience.
- 15+ years of software engineering experience, including time as a recognized technical authority across a complex, multi-system domain.
- 5+ years of direct engineering management experience, with a demonstrated track record of building and developing high-performing teams.
- Experience in graph data structures and modeling — specifically the tradeoffs between graph and relational representations of connected data at scale.
- Track record designing and owning API contracts and data models for platform systems used by internal and external consumers.
- Experience in enterprise or workforce identity contexts: organizational structures, delegated authority, entitlements, or B2B identity patterns.
- Ability to operate at both the technical and managerial layer — hands-on enough to drive architecture, effective enough as a manager to build team capacity and execution velocity.

## Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Amazon Neptune, or similar) and designing schemas that model complex identity or organizational relationships at scale.
- Experience designing and owning platform APIs consumed across a large enterprise — including versioning strategy, backward compatibility, and governance — ideally in a multi-tenant or B2B context.
- Experience with authentication protocols and standards (OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SAML) and how they intersect with trust and identity graph models.
- Familiarity with NIST 800-63 or similar identity assurance frameworks, particularly as they apply to credential verification and trust decisions.
- Experience in regulated environments with security, compliance, or data privacy requirements.
- Experience with cloud-native infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and the operational considerations of running graph workloads at scale.
- Familiarity with emerging identity and credentialing standards (Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers, OIDC extensions).
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, with a track record of driving alignment across engineering, product, and cross-functional stakeholders.

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