Senior / Staff Identity Platform Engineer

I'm partnering with a leading global financial services organisation to help build a brand new Identity Engineering function in Chicago. This is a highly technical environment with complex engineering challenges, where individuals are expected to take real ownership rather than rely on large teams of specialists to deliver solutions. I'm interested in engineers who have worked in lean, high performing teams, where they've been the go-to person for identity engineering. Whilst candidates from large investment banks, healthcare providers and other enterprise environments will absolutely be considered, we'll be prioritising those who can demonstrate genuine technical ownership, autonomy and the ability to design, build and deliver complex identity solutions themselves. The opportunity is to join at the beginning, help establish the technical foundations and influence how authentication and authorisation services are designed, built and operated. What will you be engineering? Building and operating enterprise authentication, SSO and federation services across cloud and on-premise infrastructure. Engineering secure OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML and JWT-based integrations across applications, APIs and internal platforms. Developing and automating identity services, access policies, token management and authentication workflows. Improving the reliability, scalability and security of identity infrastructure. Helping shape the team's future direction, including machine identity, modern authorisation and emerging identity technologies. What am I looking for? Someone who has genuinely engineered identity solutions, rather than simply administered IAM platforms. I'd be interested in engineers with experience across: Ping Federate, Ping Identity or ForgeRock - highly desirable, but not essential. OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, SSO and federation - strong practical knowledge. Java, Python, Go or PowerShell - hands-on engineering and automation. REST APIs, JWT, certificates, PKI and secure authentication flows. Linux, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD and infrastructure automation. You don't need experience across every technology listed above, and we're open to different levels of seniority. The important thing is that you've taken ownership of complex identity engineering challenges, can work independently and enjoy building solutions rather than simply maintaining existing systems.

If you're an engineer who enjoys solving complex identity problems and wants to help build a new function from the ground up, I'd love to speak with you.