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.

What You’ll Do:

• 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.

• Spirited - We bring energy and passion to everything we do

• Trust - We act with integrity and deliver on our commitments

• Respect - We listen, value different perspectives, and work as one team

• Ownership - We take initiative and follow through

• Nimble - We adapt quickly in a fast-changing environment

• Global - We embrace diverse people and ideas to drive better outcomes

We believe weaving these core values into our day-to-day actions, and our process for hiring, evaluating, and promoting employees, helps us cultivate a work environment that embraces collaboration and camaraderie.

We take care of our employees. We offer competitive salaries, a meaningful bonus program, and excellent benefits, including healthcare insurance, as well as pension/retirement matching, comprehensive life insurance, an employee assistance program, time off plans, and paid company holidays.

Delinea is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type with regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Upon conditional offer of employment, candidates are required to complete comprehensive criminal background check, verification of education, and verification of employment, per employment policy. In addition, all publicly posted social media sites may be reviewed.