Staff Software Engineer-Security Products

The role

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer (IC5) to join our Security Products team, spanning Identity and Access Management (IAM), Key Management Systems (KMS), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), and Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM). Security Products is the trust layer for DigitalOcean's platform — the systems you will influence protect every customer workload, every cryptographic key, every identity assertion, and every access decision made across the platform, including our rapidly growing AI inference stack.

This is not a role scoped to a single product or team. As a Staff Engineer in Security Products, you will set the technical direction across the entire security products organization, resolve architectural conflicts that no individual team can resolve alone, and build the connective tissue between identity, key management, and posture systems that makes DigitalOcean's security platform coherent rather than fragmented. You will be the primary technical partner to the Sr.

What you will do

Define Security Products Architecture: Own the multi-year technical strategy across IAM, KMS, CSPM, and ISPM — ensuring these systems compose coherently rather than operating as isolated products. Identify the seams where identity, key management, and posture signal must integrate, and drive the architectural decisions that close them.
Lead the Agent Identity & Trust Architecture: Define how DigitalOcean's platform establishes, validates, and governs identity for non-human workloads — including agentic AI systems, inference pipelines, and service-to-service trust. This spans SPIFFE/SPIRE-style workload identity, short-lived credential issuance, scoped JWT attestation, and the policy engine that governs what agents are permitted to do and access.
Own Cross-Domain Security Platform Decisions: Serve as the primary technical arbitrator for decisions that span more than one Security Products team — including how key material is bound to identity assertions, how CSPM findings feed into access policy enforcement, how ISPM risk signals propagate into real-time authorization decisions, and how audit evidence flows across all four domains in a compliance-coherent way.
Shape DigitalOcean's Security Posture Strategy: Define the technical architecture for how DigitalOcean discovers, evaluates, and remediates posture risk across its platform — spanning CSPM (misconfigured infrastructure) and ISPM (over-privileged identities, orphaned credentials, policy drift). Drive the integration of posture signal into identity and access enforcement so that policy is adaptive, not static.
Drive Protocol and Standards Adoption: Own the technical strategy for security standards adoption across the platform — evaluating and standardizing on OIDC, SAML, SCIM, WIMSE, OAuth Token Exchange, KMIP, PKCS#11, and emerging NIST PQC standards. Represent DigitalOcean's technical interests in external standards conversations where relevant.
Establish Engineering Standards Across Security Products: Define and socialize cryptographic engineering practices, identity protocol patterns, policy authoring standards, and posture evaluation frameworks — raising the engineering floor across all Security Products teams and influencing the broader DO engineering organization.
Partner with Compliance and Executive Leadership: Translate security platform architecture into compliance posture and business impact for CISO, CPTO, and board-level audiences. Own the technical framing for HIPAA Covered Product expansion, SOC 2 control engineering, and emerging regulatory requirements as they intersect with identity and key management.
Mentor and Multiply: Coach IC3 and IC4 engineers across Security Products teams on system design, security engineering rigor, and cross-functional technical communication. Act as a technical multiplier — raising the capability of the organization, not just delivering individually.

What You'll Add to DigitalOcean

Experience: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years of sustained focus on security-critical systems — spanning at least two of: Identity/IAM, cryptographic systems/KMS, cloud security posture, or infrastructure security — at cloud or enterprise scale.
Language Expert: Expert-level proficiency in Go, with deep experience building and operating security-critical, high-scale distributed services in production.
Identity Authority: Deep knowledge of identity protocols (OIDC, OAuth2, SAML, SCIM) and access control models (RBAC, ABAC, PBAC); able to design novel identity systems — including workload and agent identity — not just implement existing patterns.
Cryptography Authority: Sound applied cryptography fundamentals — symmetric and asymmetric primitives, key derivation hierarchies, authenticated encryption, envelope encryption patterns — and a track record of designing cryptographic systems correctly under real operational constraints.
Posture Systems: Experience designing or operating CSPM or ISPM systems — including resource discovery, policy evaluation at scale, misconfiguration detection, and risk signal aggregation. Familiarity with cloud resource models (DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP, or Azure) and the control frameworks that govern them (CIS Benchmarks, NIST CSF, or equivalent).
Cross-Domain Integration: Demonstrated ability to design systems where identity, key management, and posture signals compose — rather than operating in isolation. Candidates who have worked at the intersection of two or more of these domains are strongly preferred.
Distributed Systems Mastery: Proven ability to design and operate systems at cloud scale — handling consensus, replication, partitioning, and failure recovery under real production conditions — with security and auditability as first-class constraints.
Organizational Influence: Track record of driving technical alignment across multiple engineering teams or organizations — including resolving architectural conflicts, establishing cross-team standards, and influencing roadmaps beyond your direct area of ownership.
Communication: Demonstrated ability to translate complex security platform strategy into business impact and compliance posture for executive and board-level audiences.

Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean

We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with a high-growth trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As part of our team, you’ll embody our "Shark" mindset: bold, ambitious, and scrappy. You'll lead with a bias for action and take true ownership of our products, customer success, and team culture.
We prioritize career development. At DigitalOcean, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will join a community of exceptional talent, collaborating closely with some of the brightest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance and fast-paced organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our talent development team prioritizes your professional development and provides resources to support your growth. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education, subject to company policy.
We care about your well-being. We take a comprehensive approach to our total rewards packages because we know different things drive different people. Our benefits are designed to support you and may include flexible time off, local team meetups, and mental health and well being support. Our benefits philosophy is consistent globally, but specific benefits and eligibility vary by location to reflect local needs and regulations.
We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. Eligible employees may also receive equity compensation, which may include a new hire equity grant and, in participating countries, the opportunity to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program. Equity awards are subject to approval and the terms of the applicable plan.
Non-sales roles: In addition to base salary, this role is eligible to participate in DigitalOcean’s annual bonus plan and may be eligible for a new hire equity grant, subject to plan terms and local eligibility. Bonus amounts depend on company and individual performance.
Sales roles (sales compensation eligible): In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible to earn incentive compensation under the applicable sales compensation plan and may be eligible for a new hire equity grant, subject to plan terms and local eligibility.
DigitalOcean is an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Application Limit: You may apply to a maximum of 3 positions within any 180-day period. This policy promotes better role-candidate matching and encourages thoughtful applications where your qualifications align most strongly.

Staff Software Engineer-Security Products

The role

Staff Software Engineer-Security Products

The role

What you will do

Nice to have

What You'll Add to DigitalOcean

Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean

About DigitalOcean

Similar jobs at other companies

Product Security Engineer

Sr. Security Engineer

Staff Security Engineer

Director of Product Security

Security Engineer

Security Engineering Manager

DigitalOcean