What are the responsibilities and job description for the Staff Software engineer - Authentication and Security Observability position at Uber?
About The Role
Uber's authentication platform handles thousands of requests per second across human users and machine identities - but today, we lack a unified way to understand the risk posture of those identities and the assets they touch. That's what you'll build.
Engineering at Uber means building for real-world impact under real-world constraints. The problems are complex, the systems are massive, and the pace is fast. As a Staff Engineer on the Login Services team (Core Security Engineering), you'll lead the design and delivery of a Security Observability Platform. This is a greenfield opportunity where you'll need to make smart decisions with imperfect information and own them end-to-end. If you think in systems, stay calm under pressure, and care about building high-leverage data platforms that sit at the intersection of security and infrastructure, this is where you'll grow.
What You'll Do
Uber's authentication platform handles thousands of requests per second across human users and machine identities - but today, we lack a unified way to understand the risk posture of those identities and the assets they touch. That's what you'll build.
Engineering at Uber means building for real-world impact under real-world constraints. The problems are complex, the systems are massive, and the pace is fast. As a Staff Engineer on the Login Services team (Core Security Engineering), you'll lead the design and delivery of a Security Observability Platform. This is a greenfield opportunity where you'll need to make smart decisions with imperfect information and own them end-to-end. If you think in systems, stay calm under pressure, and care about building high-leverage data platforms that sit at the intersection of security and infrastructure, this is where you'll grow.
What You'll Do
- Design, build, and maintain a Security Observability Platform-including data models, identity/asset graphs, and risk signal pipelines-where performance, safety, and scale are paramount.
- Solve messy, high-impact problems at the intersection of security and infrastructure, often starting without a clear playbook or predefined solution.
- Champion engineering best practices like code health, testing, and design clarity, ensuring the platform remains reliable and observable even as we scale rapidly.
- Own your work end-to-end , from the initial architectural design doc to debugging production issues when the stakes for company-wide security are high.
- Turn data into decisions by collaborating across Security, IT, and Ops to identify high-value use cases like adaptive auth policies and automated threat detection.
- Navigate ambiguity and complexity , working through technical debt and shifting priorities while keeping long-term security impact in mind.
- Lead through influence , driving technical direction, conducting design reviews, and mentoring senior engineers through hands-on collaboration rather than just oversight.
- 8 years of experience building platform services (APIs, data pipelines, or shared infrastructure) in production distributed systems.
- Proficiency in Go or Java (our primary stack) with a track record of writing high-quality, reliable, and testable code.
- Experience owning complex systems end-to-end , including architecture, rollout, and long-term operational health in high-uptime environments.
- Experience building data platforms or graph-based systems that serve multiple internal or external consumers.
- Background in security engineering , particularly in identity, authentication, or security data/signals platforms.
- Experience modeling risk , such as fraud signals, threat scoring, or compliance posture systems.
- Systems thinking and adaptability , with a proven ability to align stakeholders across organizational boundaries to drive a technical vision.
- Technical leadership experience , including mentoring senior engineers and setting strategic direction for a team or organization.
Salary : $232,000 - $258,000