---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Security Platform: Authentication at GitLab'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-security-platform-authentication-gitlab-bengaluru-77srm3fw57s8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-11'
---

# Staff Software Engineer, Security Platform: Authentication at GitLab

- **Company:** GitLab
- **Location:** Bengaluru, India
- **Posted:** 2026-11-11
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/8930224002

## Job description

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.

The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, with all team members expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact. GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Our high-performance culture is driven by our values and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. [Co-create the future with us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuZIb5zszQI) as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.

*Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

An overview of this role

As a Staff Software Engineer on GitLab's Authentication team, you'll be the technical lead for how every user, application, token, and automated agent proves who it is on GitLab.com, Self-Managed, and Dedicated.

We're an OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider for millions of users. We also accept identity from enterprise identity providers through Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). Behind that sit more than ten token types and several session methods that grew inside the Ruby on Rails monolith. You'll help us move this work onto GATE, GitLab's new authentication and authorization platform. GATE exchanges external credentials for short-lived tokens at the edge through a Secure Token Service written in Go.You'll set our technical direction, lead the hardest protocol and migration work yourself, and help senior engineers own the rest.

Our projects include:

- OAuth across Cells: Making OAuth clients, grants, and tokens work when users and organizations live in different cells
- Global identities: One user identity that works across organizations and cells
- Token consolidation: Reducing the number of token types and moving token issuance and validation out of the monolith
- Identity for artificial intelligence (AI) agents and workloads: OAuth for Model Context Protocol (MCP) clients, workload identity federation, and service identities with narrow scopes

## What you'll do

- Own the technical direction for authentication protocols at GitLab, including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, and token exchange, across the Rails monolith and GATE services.
- Write and drive design documents and architecture decision records (ADRs) for multi-quarter work, then break that work into increments that ship behind feature flags.
- Lead migrations that must not break existing customers: token formats, client and grant state, and session behavior on GitLab.com, Self-Managed, and Dedicated.
- Be hands-on in the most complex parts of the code, in Ruby on Rails and Go, and review the designs and merge requests of other engineers.
- Agree interface contracts with the GATE Core, GATE Infra, Authorization, and Tenant Scale (Cells and Organizations) teams, and keep them current as the architecture changes.
- Treat authentication as a security and availability boundary: threat-model new flows, add rate limits and abuse controls, and lead the technical response to authentication incidents.
- Mentor senior and intermediate engineers on the team and raise the protocol and security knowledge of the whole group.
- Work asynchronously with engineers in India, Europe, and the Americas, with most decisions made in writing.
- Take part in on-call or operational support where your team’s ownership model requires it.

## What you'll bring

- Significant experience building and running production authentication or identity systems at scale, with technical leadership across teams that moves unclear problems to written decisions and shipped code.
- Deep, hands-on knowledge of OAuth 2.0 and OIDC: authorization code with Proof Key for Code Exchange (PKCE), refresh token rotation, token exchange, client registration, scopes, and JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) with signing keys and key rotation.
- Working knowledge of SAML 2.0 single sign-on and enterprise identity integration (LDAP, System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM), or similar).
- Strong production experience in Ruby on Rails or Go, willingness to work in both, and experience with careful refactors, feature-flagged rollouts, and backward-compatible migrations in large, long-lived codebases.
- A security mindset. You think about token theft, replay, revocation, and blast radius before you think about elegance.
- Experience with multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) systems, including data isolation and performance under high request volume.
- Clear, concise written English and comfort working in an all-remote, asynchronous company.
- Optional experience: authentication libraries (Doorkeeper, Devise, or OmniAuth), passkeys or multi-factor authentication, workload identity, gateways or policy engines, AI agent authentication, or multi-region architectures. Contributions to identity standards or open source identity projects are also welcome.

## About the team

The Authentication group is part of the Security Platform stage, alongside Authorization, GATE Core, GATE Infra, Secrets Manager, and other security teams. We own sign-in, single sign-on, OAuth, and personal and service tokens. Our work touches every GitLab customer, and much of it is on the critical path for Cells and for GitLab's AI agent platform.

How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees

- [Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/benefits/general-and-entity-benefits/)
- [Flexible Paid Time Off](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/time-off-and-absence/time-off-types/#flexible-paid-time-off-pto)
- [Team Member Resource Groups](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/inclusion/tmrg-tmag/)
- [Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/stock-options/)
- [Growth and Development Fund](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/growth-and-development/)
- [Parental Leave](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/benefits/general-and-entity-benefits/#parental-leave)

Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from [underrepresented groups](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#examples-of-select-underrepresented-groups) are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.

Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.

Privacy Policy: Please review our [Recruitment Privacy Policy.](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/candidate-faq/recruitment-privacy-policy/) Your privacy is important to us.

GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also [GitLab’s EEO Policy](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-policies/inc-usa/#equal-employment-opportunity-policy) and [EEO is the Law](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/labor-and-employment-notices/#eeoc-us-equal-employment-opportunity-commission-notices). If you have a disability or special need that requires [accommodation](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-policies/inc-usa/#reasonable-accommodation), please let us know during the [recruiting process](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/interviewing/#adjustments-to-our-interview-process).

## About GitLab

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: GitLab provides an intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, enabling teams and AI agents to plan, build, secure, and deploy software faster.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NASDAQ: GTLB)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, CA, USA
- **Founded**: 2011
- **Founders**: Not explicitly listed in provided materials

## Core Business
- Primary industry: DevSecOps, Software Development Lifecycle Platform
- Target customers: Enterprise, SMB, B2B – used by over 100,000 organizations including large enterprises
- Mission / Purpose: "Unlock every team to ship trusted software at the speed of imagination"

## Products & Services
- **[GitLab Platform](https://about.gitlab.com/company/)**: Integrated DevSecOps/DevOps platform (SaaS and self-managed) covering source code management, CI/CD, security scanning, monitoring, and AI-powered features (e.g., Duo Agent).
- **GitLab Duo**: AI-powered suite of tools for code generation, review, and automation across the software lifecycle.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed in provided materials (public company – refer to NASDAQ: GTLB)
- **Key Metrics**: Over 50 million registered users, 2,500+ team members, 5,500+ code contributors, 2,500+ consecutive monthly releases (as of June 2026)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Public company; prior investors include Y Combinator (2015 cohort). Detailed list not provided.
- **Growth Signals**: 100,000+ organizations use GitLab; continuous monthly releases since 2011; expanding AI capabilities (Duo Agent); certification as Great Place to Work (US & India, 2026–2027)

## Competitive Advantages
- **All-in-one DevSecOps platform** that replaces multiple point tools, reducing complexity and toolchain friction.
- **Strong open-source heritage** and community-driven innovation (5,500+ contributors).
- **AI-first approach** with built-in agents for code generation, review, and security.
- **Culture of transparency** – handbook-first, public-by-default documentation that scales remote work.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI-powered software creation**: Deep integration of AI agents (Duo Agent) to accelerate development while maintaining security and compliance.
- **Enterprise adoption**: Scaling to meet the needs of large, regulated organizations with compliance and security features.
- **Remote-first operations**: Continuing to build and improve asynchronous, all-remote work culture as a competitive advantage.

## Why Work Here
- **Fully remote**: 100% remote company from the start – work from anywhere; asynchronous and flexible schedules.
- **Awards & recognition**: Great Place to Work Certified (US & India 2026–2027); BuiltIn Best Remote Places to Work 2026; Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology 2025.
- **Benefits**: Equity compensation, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, generous paid time off, annual growth & development benefit, access to LinkedIn Learning and leadership programs.
- **Inclusive culture**: Multiple Team Member Resource Groups, strong Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging (DIB) commitment.
- **Learning & development**: Industry-leading leadership programs and platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Level Up.

## Sources
1. [about.gitlab.com](https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/)
2. [about.gitlab.com/company](https://about.gitlab.com/company/)
3. [handbook.gitlab.com](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/employment-branding/content-library/)
4. [job-boards.greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/8481958002)
5. [about.gitlab.com (homepage)](https://about.gitlab.com/)

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