Staff Engineer

About the Role

Join Clerk as a Staff Engineer to drive the technical vision and architecture for critical infrastructure that powers millions of developers globally. This is an opportunity to have a massive impact on the reliability, scalability, and future direction of our core platform.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for major components of our authentication and session management platform.
• Lead complex, cross-functional engineering initiatives from inception through deployment, ensuring high quality and performance.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and best practices across the organization.
• Conduct deep-dive technical analysis, performance tuning, and incident response for high-scale, distributed systems.
• Establish engineering standards for reliability, observability, and security across the platform.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software development experience, with significant time spent in a senior or staff-level role.
• Proven expertise in designing, building, and operating large-scale, highly available distributed systems.
• Deep understanding of modern web technologies, security protocols (e.g., OAuth, OIDC), and API design.
• Exceptional communication skills, capable of articulating complex technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience leading technical strategy and mentoring engineers in a fast-paced environment.

Role Impact

As a Staff Engineer, you will be instrumental in ensuring Clerk's platform can handle exponential growth while maintaining industry-leading uptime and developer experience. Your architectural decisions will directly influence the security and performance of thousands of applications relying on Clerk.