Software Engineer, Agent Auth

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.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and operate the identity, authentication, and authorization systems that power Vercel and our Customers for both people and agents.
• Shape how agents prove who they are, act on behalf of users and teams, and receive scoped, time-bound, auditable access.
• Build secure, scalable APIs, services, and SDKs that make auth simple for developers and their agents to adopt.
• Work with modern and emerging standards (such as OAuth 2.x, OIDC, and agent-focused protocols) and help influence where they go next.
• Lead projects end-to-end: identify opportunities, set technical direction, and deliver improvements in security, reliability, and developer experience.
• Partner closely with product, security, and platform teams across Vercel to make identity a strength of every product we ship.
• Participate in the on-call rotation, taking responsibility for the reliability of critical systems.
• Contribute to open source and the broader community conversation on agent identity and trust.
• Write clean, efficient, tested, and well-documented code that others can build upon confidently.

What you need

• [3+] years of experience designing, building, and operating backend systems in production at scale.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript, or a comparable backend language and the willingness to work primarily in TypeScript.
• Solid understanding of authentication and authorization concepts, such as sessions, tokens, OAuth/OIDC flows, permission models, and secrets management.
• A security-minded approach to engineering: you think about threat models, least privilege, and failure modes as part of design, not as an afterthought.
• A track record of end-to-end ownership, from design and implementation through to long-term operation.
• Ability to reason about architectural tradeoffs, balancing long-term vision with pragmatic delivery.
• Strong cross-team collaboration skills and the ability to drive alignment toward shared goals.
• Curiosity and comfort working in a fast-moving space where the right answers are still being figured out.

Bonus if you

• Have built or operated identity providers, auth platforms, or access-control systems used by other developers.
• Have experience with delegated authorization, workload identity, service-to-service auth, or machine credentials.
• Have worked on LLM-powered agents, tool calling, or protocols like MCP.
• Have experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Are familiar with React or Next.js.
• Have contributed to open-source projects or standards bodies.

Benefits & Compensation

• Competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Inclusive Healthcare Package.
• Learn and Grow: we provide mentorship and send you to events that help you build your network and skills.
• Flexible Time Off.
• We will provide you the gear you need to do your role, and a WFH budget for you to outfit your space as needed.

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.