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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Authentication Engineer

💰 $120,000 - $200,000

EngineeringSecurityIdentity & AccessWeb Development

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Authentication Engineer is a hands-on security and identity specialist responsible for designing, building, and operating modern authentication systems that enable secure, scalable, and user-friendly sign-in experiences. This role centers on implementing passwordless and multi-factor authentication (MFA) using WebAuthn / FIDO2, integrating identity protocols (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML), and applying cryptographic best practices to protect keys, tokens, and sessions. The ideal candidate partners closely with product, platform, and security teams to ship production-ready authentication SDKs, protect customer accounts, and reduce risk while optimizing user experience.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Software Engineer — Backend or Frontend with security interest
  • Security Engineer, Application Security or Product Security
  • Identity Engineer / IAM Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Senior Web Authentication Engineer / Principal Engineer (Authentication)
  • Identity & Access Management (IAM) Lead or Architect
  • Head of Authentication, Director of Identity, or Product Security Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Application Security Engineer
  • Platform Security / SRE focused on identity
  • Developer Experience (DX) Engineer focused on security SDKs

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, implement, and maintain production-grade WebAuthn / FIDO2 authentication flows for web and mobile, including credential registration, assertion flows, attestation handling, and attestation verification logic to meet platform and regulatory requirements.
  • Architect and develop passwordless and multi-factor authentication solutions (biometrics, hardware tokens, platform authenticators) that integrate natively with browsers and mobile OS APIs while prioritizing accessibility and usability.
  • Implement and operate OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect authorization servers and flows (authorization code, PKCE, implicit, device code) with secure token issuance, rotation, revocation, and refresh strategies.
  • Integrate and maintain SAML-based single sign-on (SSO) integrations and enterprise identity federation with external Identity Providers (IdPs), including metadata management, certificate rotation, and troubleshooting SAML assertions.
  • Lead cryptographic design and key management activities: design secure key generation, storage and rotation policies, integrate with Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) or cloud KMS, and implement secure attestation and challenge-response protocols.
  • Build and maintain SDKs (JavaScript, TypeScript, iOS, Android) and backend libraries (Go, Java, Python, Node.js) that abstract WebAuthn and authentication flows for product teams and third-party developers; ensure backward compatibility and semantic versioning.
  • Harden authentication endpoints and services: threat model authentication flows, implement rate limiting, anomaly detection, brute-force protection, and account lockout policies while minimizing false positives.
  • Define and implement secure session management strategies, cookie and token lifetimes, SameSite attributes, CSRF protections, refresh token rotation, and session revocation across distributed systems.
  • Collaborate with product managers and designers to translate security requirements into user-friendly authentication UX — perform A/B testing, measure adoption, and iterate to reduce friction while maintaining high assurance.
  • Implement monitoring, observability, and incident response tooling for authentication systems: structured logs, distributed tracing, metrics (latency, success/failure rates), alerting for suspicious behavior, and runbooks for account compromise incidents.
  • Perform security code reviews and threat modeling for authentication components and provide remediation plans and guidance to engineering teams building on top of the authentication platform.
  • Develop and execute integration tests and end-to-end test suites for WebAuthn and identity flows across browsers, devices, and operating systems to ensure cross-platform compatibility and regression prevention.
  • Maintain compliance posture for authentication systems (SOC2, ISO, GDPR), supporting audits by preparing design documentation, evidence of secure key handling, consent flows, and data retention policies.
  • Lead migration and rollout plans for large-scale changes to authentication models (e.g., migrating from passwords to passwordless) including feature flags, incremental deployments, and customer/partner communication.
  • Integrate with downstream systems (authorization, account management, customer support tooling) to expose authentication state and diagnostic data while preserving user privacy and minimizing sensitive data exposure.
  • Prototype and evaluate new authentication technologies (passkeys, platform authenticators, biometric attestation methods, FIDO2 extensions) and produce feasibility studies and performance/security trade-off analyses.
  • Optimize authentication service performance and scalability: design stateless services where appropriate, tune database access patterns, use caches safely for read-heavy flows, and design horizontal scaling strategies under peak load.
  • Provide L2/L3 support for complex authentication incidents, conduct root cause analysis, and implement long-term fixes and compensating controls to prevent recurrence.
  • Create comprehensive documentation, developer guides, integration examples, and security playbooks for internal teams and external developers implementing authentication flows.
  • Mentor and coach engineers on secure implementation patterns for authentication and identity, run workshops on WebAuthn/FIDO2 fundamentals, and evangelize passwordless security best practices across the organization.
  • Coordinate with legal and privacy teams on consent requirements and user data handling for authentication metadata (device attestations, telemetry) and ensure minimum necessary collection.
  • Manage third-party identity and device attestation vendors: evaluate security posture, SLAs, and integration approaches and maintain vendor relationships and contracts where applicable.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc cross-functional requests to instrument authentication telemetry for analytics, product reporting, and fraud detection use cases.
  • Collaborate with customer support and ops teams to provide diagnostic tools and user recovery flows that are secure and auditable.
  • Participate in sprint planning, grooming, and agile ceremonies; estimate work, communicate progress, and help prioritize authentication backlog items.
  • Contribute to the organization’s identity and authentication roadmap, including technical debt remediation, platform hardening, and migration strategies.
  • Provide consultation to mobile and web engineering teams to ensure secure client-side integration of WebAuthn APIs and correct use of browser security features (Credential Management API, iframe isolation).
  • Implement blue/green or canary deployment patterns for authentication changes to reduce blast radius during rollouts.
  • Help define SLAs and SLOs for authentication services and contribute to post-incident reviews that improve reliability and security posture.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep practical experience implementing WebAuthn and FIDO2 (attestation/attestation formats, assertion verification, resident credentials, user verification).
  • Strong understanding of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect: authorization server implementation, token lifecycles, PKCE, scopes, claims, and delegation patterns.
  • Experience with SAML 2.0 integrations and enterprise federation patterns (IdP/ SP metadata, certificates, inbound/outbound SSO).
  • Solid cryptography fundamentals: public-key cryptography, signature verification, key provenance, secure RNGs, certificate chains, and X.509 handling.
  • Hands-on experience with key management and HSMs or cloud KMS (AWS KMS, Google Cloud KMS, Azure Key Vault) including envelope encryption and key rotation.
  • Familiarity with hardware tokens and passkeys: YubiKey, Titan Security Key, platform authenticators (Touch ID, Face ID, Windows Hello).
  • Proficiency in one or more backend languages and ecosystems used for identity services (Go, Java, Python, Node.js) and building REST/gRPC APIs.
  • Strong JavaScript/TypeScript knowledge for building secure client-side authentication flows and SDKs that interact with navigator.credentials and WebAuthn API.
  • Experience building production-grade SDKs and libraries with testing, CI/CD pipelines, semantic versioning, and release workflows.
  • Knowledge of secure session management, cookie attributes, token storage best practices, CSRF and XSS mitigations for auth flows.
  • Exposure to identity governance, account recovery strategies, fraud detection signals, and anomaly detection methods.
  • Experience with observability and security tooling: centralized logging, monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana), SIEM, and alerting for auth anomalies.
  • Familiarity with containerization and deployment tooling (Docker, Kubernetes), and experience operating services in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).
  • Hands-on experience conducting security reviews, threat models, and implementing mitigations for authentication attack vectors (replay, credential stuffing, account takeover).
  • Scripting and automation skills for testing, deployment, and environment management (Bash, Python, or equivalent).

Soft Skills

  • Clear communicator who can translate technical complexity into business and product language for stakeholders.
  • Strong collaboration skills working with product, UX, legal/privacy, and support teams to deliver secure, usable authentication experiences.
  • Customer-focused mindset: balances security posture with friction reduction and adoption metrics.
  • Analytical problem-solver with attention to detail and a security-first approach to architecture and implementation.
  • Mentorship and leadership: ability to coach engineers on secure practices and evangelize identity best practices across teams.
  • Comfortable working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and prioritizing work to deliver high-impact results.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Security, or a related technical field — or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, or related field; or relevant security certifications (CISSP, OSCP, GIAC, FIDO Alliance training).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Security / Cybersecurity
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Applied Cryptography / Security Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years building and operating authentication, identity, or security infrastructure.

Preferred: 5+ years of hands-on experience implementing authentication systems and at least 2+ years specifically in WebAuthn / FIDO2 and modern identity protocols (OAuth2/OIDC, SAML). Experience running production IAM systems at scale, evidence of shipping SDKs and security-focused platform features, and participation in incident response for authentication issues is strongly preferred.

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