Staff Software Development Engineer - SDM

This position is on the team building StrongDM, now part of Delinea-the universal access management platform that secures and audits access to databases, servers, Kubernetes clusters, and web applications. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will apply deep expertise across distributed systems, security, and cloud architecture to help shape the technical direction of StrongDM's proxy and control-plane platform.

You will take on the platform's most complex and ambiguous engineering challenges, exercise independent judgment on architecture and design decisions that span multiple teams, and serve as a recognized subject matter expert on secure, high-scale distributed systems written in Go. You will report to the team's engineering manager.

- Lead the architecture and technical direction of highly concurrent, distributed backend systems in Go (Golang), setting engineering standards that extend across multiple teams within StrongDM and Delinea.

- Drive design decisions for the proxy data plane (gateways and relays) and control-plane services, evaluating tradeoffs on the platform's most complex and ambiguous technical problems.

- Partner with architects, product managers, and DevOps/SRE leadership to shape multi-quarter system roadmaps, translating broader business priorities into concrete technical strategy.

- Serve as a subject matter expert on secure network protocols and cryptographic systems (TLS/mTLS, credential brokering, key management), guiding their application across the platform.

- Lead code and design reviews across teams, holding a high bar for performance, security, and maintainability, and coach engineers on applying that bar independently.

- Investigate and resolve the most challenging technical issues in distributed, multi-cloud production environments, often requiring evaluation of ambiguous or intangible tradeoffs.

- Author and maintain architectural and technical strategy documentation that informs decisions beyond your immediate team.

- Mentor engineers across the team and may direct the work of others, building the cross-team relationships that help align engineering execution with company objectives.

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, software engineering, or related technical discipline.

- 8+ years of professional experience working as a software engineer, with deep expertise in Go (Golang) , distributed systems, and backend/network service development at scale.

- Demonstrated experience architecting highly concurrent, distributed systems and exercising independent judgment on methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria, including Go's standard networking and cryptography libraries.

- Strong understanding of distributed systems, network protocols, and API design (gRPC/Protobuf and/or RESTful APIs), with the ability to reason about tradeoffs across an entire system.

- Experience with AWS (or another major cloud provider) and cloud-native deployment models at production scale.

- Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to convey advanced technical concepts and persuade diverse stakeholders and audiences.

- Proven ability to build formal working relationships and coordinate across multiple teams and functions.

- Conceptual thinking skills sufficient to understand advanced technical issues and their broader implications for the business.

- Demonstrated track record mentoring engineers and being recognized as a subject matter expert others turn to for guidance.

- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) beyond a single provider.

- Experience establishing or influencing engineering-wide standards for Terraform automation and CI/CD pipelines.

- Deep expertise with secure protocols, mTLS and PKI, secrets management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault), and credential brokering.

- Familiarity with proxying database, SSH/RDP, Kubernetes, and HTTP traffic, and with building CLI or desktop client tooling.

- Experience shaping Zero Trust architecture strategy, just-in-time access models, and policy-as-code (e.g., Cedar) at an organizational level.