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Principal Engineer, Identity & Engagement

228k – 347kUnited StatesBackend EngineeringRemote10+ YOE
Summary

Leads technical architecture and modernization of Dropbox's identity, access, engagement, and insights platforms, driving high-reliability services for AI workflows and user experiences. Requires 10+ years in large-scale backend systems with expertise in authn/authz or related areas.

About the role

Responsibilities

  • Technical leadership and architecture: Define and drive the technical roadmap for identity and engagement platform services, including APIs, service boundaries, data models, and reliability goals.
  • Modernization and platform evolution: Lead multi-quarter modernization efforts (e.g., reducing legacy dependencies, improving scalability, simplifying integrations) with a focus on cohesion, observability, and operational excellence.
  • Identity and access systems: Design and improve authentication, authorization, account integrity, and identity lifecycle services with strong security and privacy posture.
  • Engagement and insights foundations: Build and evolve the systems that power engagement signals, experimentation hooks, telemetry/analytics pipelines, and usage insights to support product iteration and growth.
  • Developer velocity and platform enablement: Create reusable platform primitives, reference architectures, and best practices that make it easier for product teams to build safely and quickly.
  • Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with Product, Design, Security, Infrastructure, and AI/ML teams to align technical decisions with customer outcomes and organizational priorities.
  • Execution and quality: Own delivery of complex initiatives end-to-end—breaking down ambiguous problems, driving alignment, and ensuring high-quality implementation, testing, rollout, and oncall readiness.
  • Mentorship and influence: Mentor senior engineers, review critical designs, elevate engineering standards, and influence technical direction across teams beyond your immediate scope.

Requirements

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and operating large-scale backend or platform systems.
  • Proven ability to lead architecture for distributed systems with high reliability, performance, and security requirements.
  • Strong expertise in at least two of the following areas: identity/authn/authz, service API design, analytics/telemetry infrastructure, search/retrieval foundations, experimentation platforms, or engagement systems.
  • Track record of driving modernization efforts in complex environments (e.g., migrating legacy systems, improving data quality and observability, simplifying architecture).
  • Excellent technical judgment and ability to balance speed, stability, and long-term maintainability.
  • Strong communication skills: able to write clear design docs, align stakeholders, and lead technical decision-making across teams.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with cloud-scale identity platforms (SSO, session management, risk signals, account security, privacy controls).
  • Familiarity with AI enablement infrastructure, especially data pipelines, engagement signals, retrieval/search systems, and feedback loops.
  • Experience building or operating multi-tenant SaaS platforms with strong compliance and security requirements.
  • Demonstrated ability to influence org-wide standards and technical strategy (beyond a single team), including mentorship of other tech leads and principals.

Compensation

  • US Zone 1: Not available
  • US Zone 2: $256,300—$346,700 USD
  • US Zone 3: $227,800—$308,200 USD
Skills
Distributed SystemsAPI DesignAuthenticationAuthorizationObservabilityTelemetryAnalytics PipelinesIdentity ManagementSSOKubernetesAWSGoogle CloudDockerPostgreSQLKafka
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