Software Engineer, Agent Auth
Required skills
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Backend Systems
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Sessions
- Tokens
- OAuth
- OIDC
- Permission Models
Nice to have
- Identity Providers
- Access Control Systems
- Delegated Authorization
- Workload Identity
- Service-to-Service Auth
- Machine Credentials
Role summary
The Agent Auth and Identity team is seeking an engineer to build foundational systems for agent authentication and authorization. This role involves designing, building, and operating systems that manage agent identity, access delegation, and secure actions across Vercel and connected services. You will develop secure, scalable APIs, services, and SDKs, working with modern standards like OAuth 2.x and OIDC. The position requires a strong understanding of security principles, end-to-end ownership, and the ability to balance long-term vision with pragmatic delivery. Experience with cloud infrastructure and identity providers is a plus.
About Vercel:
Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company, freeing people and agents to ship what's next. For more than a decade we've helped builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.
Now we're scaling our products for both agents and people to ship and run software, built in the open and trusted by OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide.
About the role:
Agents are becoming first-class users of the internet. They sign in, call APIs, deploy code, and act on behalf of people and teams. That raises questions the web was never designed to answer: Who is this agent? Who does it work for? What is it allowed to do, for how long, and how do we know?
As an engineer on the Agent Auth and Identity team, you'll help answer those questions. You'll build the systems that let agents and people authenticate, delegate access, and act safely across Vercel and the services our customers connect to. This is foundational work: identity and authorization sit underneath everything we ship, and getting them right for agents will shape how modern software gets built.
The scope is intentionally broad. You might spend one quarter designing how credentials are issued and scoped for autonomous agents, and the next building the developer-facing APIs and SDKs that make secure auth feel effortless. You'll own systems end-to-end, from design through long-term operation in production.
We're looking for engineers who care deeply about security and developer experience in equal measure, enjoy working on problems without established playbooks, and want to define how trust works in an agentic world. This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco, in the office on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.
What you'll do:
What you need:
Benefits & Compensation:
The base pay range for this role is $196,000 – $294,000. Actual salary will be based on job-related skills, experience, and location. The total compensation package may include benefits, equity-based compensation, and eligibility for a company bonus or variable pay program depending on the role. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process.
Disclosures:
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