Senior Staff Backend Engineer - IAM

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Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced Senior Staff Engineer to lead backend engineering efforts specifically focused on identity and access management (IAM) for our next-generation AI cloud platform.

Coupang is building a platform designed to power AI workloads at scale. As part of this multi-year initiative, the Identity team is responsible for managing user and machine identities, authentication, authorization, and secure service-to-service communication across the platform.

This role will drive the development of foundational identity services that enable secure, scalable cloud infrastructure, handling hundreds of thousands of authentication events daily with rapidly growing scale.

You will have the opportunity to :

• Build and scale identity and authentication systems for a next-generation AI platform
• Work on cutting-edge IAM challenges including OAuth2, OIDC, service-to-service authentication, and machine identity
• Operate and scale systems handling 500K+ authentication requests daily
• Collaborate across global teams in India, US, and other regions

What You Will Do

• Lead and grow a high-performing backend engineering team focused on identity and access management
• Drive development of core IAM capabilities including authentication, authorization, and identity lifecycle management
• Design and build scalable systems for user identity and machine identity management within a cloud environment
• Work on modern authentication protocols such as OAuth2, OIDC, and SAML, and implement secure service-to-service authentication
• Build and evolve authorization frameworks leveraging RBAC/ABAC models and policy engines (e.g., OPA)
• Partner with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, scalable infrastructure for AI workloads
• Drive technical design, execution planning, and delivery of complex distributed systems
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and security of identity systems as the platform scales rapidly
• Mentor engineers and foster a strong engineering culture focused on ownership and excellence

Basic Qualifications

• 13 - 17 years of backend software engineering experience.
• Strong experience in backend development using Java or Python with REST API design
• Hands-on experience with authentication and authorization technologies (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML)
• Solid understanding of identity systems including user identity and machine/workload identity
• Experience with service-to-service authentication and distributed system security
• Strong problem-solving and execution skills with ability to break down complex systems
• Experience working in cloud environments (AWS preferred)
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building IAM systems in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Familiarity with PKI, certificate lifecycle management, and secure identity frameworks
• Experience with authorization frameworks (RBAC, ABAC, OPA)
• Exposure to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures
• Experience working on large-scale distributed systems handling high request volumes
• Background in platform engineering or infrastructure teams

Type of work model

• Hybrid / Onsite / Remote working

Our Hybrid work model: Coupang hybrid work model is designed to enable a culture of collaboration that acts a catalyst to enrich the experience of employees. Employees are required to work at least 3 days in the office per week, with the flexibility to work from home 2 days a week, depending on the role requirement. Some businesses may require more time in office due to nature of work.

Details to consider

• Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.

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Please complete the attachedInternal Transfer Request Form and submit. 

Please make sure toapply with your Coupang e-mail address.