Staff Software Engineer, Identity & Access

Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their fans and build a lasting business including: paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live video, and selling to fans directly with one-time purchases. Ultimately our goal is simple: fund the creative class. And we're leaders in that space, with: - $10 billion+ generated by creators since Patreon's inception - 100 million+ free memberships for fans who may not be ready to pay just yet, and - 25 million+ paid memberships on Patreon today. We're continuing to invest heavily in building the best creator platform with the best team in the creator economy and are looking for a Staff Software Engineer focused on Identity and Access to support our mission. This role is available as a hybrid (two days per week in office) in New York or San Francisco, or as fully remote in other locations. ABOUT THE TEAM Patreon's Identity and Access team builds and maintains core Patreon systems related to user identity and authentication. They work on projects such as identity verification, user authentication, and account takeover detection and prevention. This team is part of Patreon's Risk Engineering org that also includes Information Security and Safety Engineering. You'll be part of Patreon's larger engineering organization and will work with cross-functional partners such as legal, compliance, security, trust and safety, and anti-fraud. ABOUT THE ROLE - Provide technical leadership on a range of identity and access related projects. - Design, build, and deploy core Patreon systems such as multi-factor authentication flows, ID verification systems, and account takeover detections. - Engage with stakeholders to define requirements and balance a range of security, privacy, and compliance needs. - Drive technical design of components that are scalable, well tested, and easy to maintain. - Identify and advance innovative solutions that improve security and usability for creators and their fans. - Collaborate with product managers, data scientists, designers, and other engineers to deliver high quality features. - Contribute to the growth and maturity of the team by improving processes, providing mentorship, and helping to expand the organization. WHAT YOU'LL NEED - Substantial experience in software development — typically 6+ years or equivalent depth of impact at scale. - Strong experience with Python or a similar language. - Experience designing and building identity or authentication systems. - Familiarity with the security and privacy concerns inherent to dealing with identity data or authentication flows. - Comfort with data storage techniques and an understanding of how data modeling, performance, and reliability intersect in real-world systems. - Experience shipping consumer-facing features, using qualitative and quantitative signals to improve user experience quality. - A track record of contributing to engineering culture through mentorship, process improvement, or defining technical standards. - Bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or the equivalent. - Belief in Patreon's mission: giving creators control over their work and building communities that feel good to be in. We hire talented and passionate people from different backgrounds because workplace diversity and inclusion is critical to our ability to serve creators worldwide. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t match with every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we’d love to hear from you. About Patreon Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values c