BambooHR - Staff Software Engineer

• Our ideal Staff Software Engineer, Permissions will be the technical authority for BambooHR's next-generation permission service — designing and building the system that securely controls what every user, token, and agent can do across our platform. You'll own the architecture of a greenfield permissions service from the ground up, define AuthN/AuthZ patterns for 180+ product domains, and be the connective tissue between the Token Titans team and the engineering organization that depends on the work you ship. If you get energy from solving hard identity and access problems at scale — and doing it in a way that other engineers actually want to build on — this role is for you. • Drive the architecture and delivery of a new permission service — from first design doc to production, including data model, policy evaluation engine, enforcement APIs, and token contract • Drive the architecture and delivery of a new permission service • Define BambooHR's AuthN/AuthZ standards — the patterns for authentication flows, token issuance, scoped authorization, and role/attribute-based access control that product teams rely on • Define BambooHR's AuthN/AuthZ standards • Design the API contract for the permission service: how callers request access decisions, how policies are defined, and how enforcement is decoupled from individual product domains • Design the API contract • Drive token strategy — JWT issuance, rotation, scoping, revocation, and the relationship between tokens and permissions across both human and machine (API/agent) callers • Drive token strategy • Partner with product and platform teams to translate domain-specific access control requirements into reusable permission primitives that scale across the organization • Partner with product and platform teams • Lead architectural reviews for features with AuthN/AuthZ implications; catch design debt before it ships • Lead architectural reviews • Collaborate with Security and Compliance to ensure the permission service meets audit, least-privilege, and zero-trust requirements • Collaborate with Security and Compliance • Set the technical bar for the Token Titans team: mentor engineers, lead RFCs, and ensure implementation quality matches architectural intent • Set the technical bar • 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years operating at Staff or Principal level • Deep expertise in identity and access management — authentication protocols (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML), authorization models (RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC), and token lifecycle management (JWTs, opaque tokens, refresh/rotation strategies) • Demonstrated experience designing and building AuthN/AuthZ systems at scale — not just integrating with them, but owning the architecture that others build on • designing and building AuthN/AuthZ systems • Strong instincts for policy-as-code, permission modeling, and how to express complex access rules as a clean, evolvable data model • Experience designing or reviewing OpenAPI specifications, event-driven architectures, and cross-service communication patterns in a service-oriented or microservice environment • Strong backend engineering fundamentals; comfort working in a PHP monolith with modern architectural patterns • Proven ability to drive org-wide architectural decisions — writing RFCs, leading reviews, building consensus across teams with competing priorities • Excellent communication skills: precise written specs, verbal presentations to engineering leadership, and the ability to explain tradeoffs in identity and security without losing the room • What Will Make Us REALLY Love You • Hands-on experience building a permission service or authorization framework from scratch (e.g., Zanzibar-style, OPA-based, or custom policy engine) • permission service or authorization framework • Familiarity with Okta, Auth0, or similar identity platforms — and a clear sense of what to build vs. what to buy • Experience with fine-grained authorization patterns (relationship-based access control, contextual policies, delegated permissions) • Background in multi-tenant SaaS — understanding how permission models must account for org hierarchy, role inheritance, and tenant isolation • Prior work on API token systems — scoped tokens, machine-to-machine auth, token introspection, or access token exchange (OAuth token exchange RFC 8693) • Experience with secrets management, certificate rotation, or secure credential storage in production environments • Familiarity with zero-trust architecture principles and how they apply to internal service-to-service authorization