Backend Engineer, Identity

Tailscale

Backend Engineer developing Tailscale's product, focusing on identity and access management in a fully remote team. Collaborating with engineers on a variety of backend services and functionalities.

Posted 6/18/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesMid-LevelSenior💰 $163,000 - $204,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Distributed SystemsGoOpen SourceSQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Develop the Tailscale product, contributing to both open source client code and related backend services.
Take ownership of the entire product lifecycle, from writing code to product ideation and strategic decision-making.
Work closely with UX/UI designers and product managers to shape features.
Bring a special focus to building features related to identity and access management.
Work as part of a team of engineers to design, build, test, and document core software components.
Develop product features in areas that include our control plane, platform, and identity services.
Develop features that support a broad range of sign-on functionality, such as SSO, OAuth2, SAML, and WebAuthn.
Develop and maintain SCIM style capabilities to synchronize users, groups and other attributes from IdPs.
Exhibit ownership over the running services that comprise Tailscale’s product by building for observability, participating in incident response, and fielding customer support escalations.
Analyze and improve efficiency, scalability, and stability of various system resources.
Bring a security-first mindset to both design and implementation.
Participate in our on-call rotation every x weeks, to triage and mitigate incidents.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Familiarity with authentication/authorization protocols, standards and frameworks such as OAuth2, OIDC, SSO, and SAML. Familiarity with SCIM is a plus.
Experience with distributed systems and building observable, secure, scalable, and resilient services.
Most of the non-front-end portions of the system are developed in the Go programming language. Experience with Go is a plus.
Experience with one or more SQL databases.
Ability to give and process constructive feedback, as well as work independently.
Flexibility to adjust to the dynamic nature of a startup.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Familiarity with networks (IP addressing, routing, etc.) is a plus.

Benefits

Comp & perks

An inclusive, flexible environment where you can be your authentic self.
A competitive total compensation package.
Comprehensive group benefits with no waiting period.
Remote first company—most of our teams work fully remotely.
Connect with other Tailscalars IRL.
Support for your personal and professional development.
Paid time off and a healthy work-life integration.
A build-your-own home office setup.
Generous parental leave program from your first day.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

GoSQLOAuth2OIDCSSOSAMLSCIMdistributed systemsidentity and access managementobservability

Soft Skills

constructive feedbackindependenceflexibilitycommunication