Principal Software Engineer (Identity & Access Management)

TL;DR

Principal Software Engineer (Identity & Access Management): Leading the technical direction for hirify.global's core user platform, including centralized permissions, authentication, and profile decomposition with an accent on Zanzibar-style authorization systems. Focus on architecting scalable, high-performance infrastructure and driving technical strategy across a large engineering organization to support a billion-user scale.

Location: Must be based in Melbourne, Australia. The role is hybrid, requiring regular in-person collaboration at the Melbourne campus.

Company

hirify.global is a global visual communication platform empowering the world to design, scaling rapidly to support hundreds of millions of users.

What you will do

• Own the technical direction for complex cross-cutting programs including Centralized Permissions, AuthZ, and Authentication Platform.
• Architect and oversee the migration of thousands of access checks into a structurally-enforced authorization platform (SpiceDB/Zanzibar-style).
• Make high-stakes technical trade-offs for critical infrastructure, balancing reliability, velocity, and security.
• Provide principal-level technical leadership across Security, API Platform, and product engineering teams.
• Mentor senior and staff engineers, raising the bar on system design and IAM best practices.
• Represent technical strategy at the executive level to motivate adoption and alignment across the business.

Requirements

• Must be based in Melbourne, Australia.
• Deep expertise in Identity & Access Management at scale, including Zanzibar-style authorization systems (e.g., SpiceDB, Google Zanzibar, OPA).
• Proven track record of driving platform adoption across large engineering organizations (300+ teams).
• Strong system architecture skills with experience making high-stakes trade-offs for high-availability infrastructure.
• Experience decomposing and evolving monolithic services in production without disrupting dependents.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor senior engineers and communicate complex technical decisions to executive audiences.

Culture & Benefits

• Equity packages to share in company success.
• Inclusive parental leave policies for all parents and carers.
• Annual Vibe & Thrive allowance for wellbeing and office setup.
• Hybrid work model balancing remote flexibility with in-person collaboration.
• Opportunity to work on systems powering a billion-user scale platform.

Hiring process

• Interviews are conducted virtually.