Lead the technical direction of identity and engagement services, modernizing systems, enhancing security, and driving platform evolution. Collaborate across teams to improve developer velocity and user experience while mentoring engineers.
Role Description
Dropbox is hiring a Principal Software Engineer, Identity & Engagement to define and build the next-generation identity platform powering Dropbox’s product ecosystem.
This platform sits at the center of every Dropbox experience, from user onboarding and collaboration to enterprise integrations and AI-powered workflows. As Dropbox evolves into an AI-native SaaS platform, identity is no longer just about users logging in. It is about securely enabling people, applications, and AI agents to act, collaborate, and automate work on their behalf.
In this role, you will set the technical vision and lead the architectural evolution of Dropbox’s identity systems, spanning authentication, authorization, account lifecycle, and delegated access. You will partner across Product, Security, Infrastructure, and AI teams to build systems that are secure, scalable, and intuitive, while enabling new classes of intelligent, agent-driven experiences.
This is a high-impact, company-level role shaping how trust, access, and control are modeled across Dropbox.
Responsibilities- Technical leadership and architecture: Define and drive the technical roadmap for identity and engagement platform services, including APIs, service boundaries, data models, and reliability goals.
- Modernization and platform evolution: Lead multi-quarter modernization efforts (e.g., reducing legacy dependencies, improving scalability, simplifying integrations) with a focus on cohesion, observability, and operational excellence.
- Identity and access systems: Design and improve authentication, authorization, account integrity, and identity lifecycle services with strong security and privacy posture.
- Engagement and insights foundations: Build and evolve the systems that power engagement signals, experimentation hooks, telemetry/analytics pipelines, and usage insights to support product iteration and growth.
- Developer velocity and platform enablement: Create reusable platform primitives, reference architectures, and best practices that make it easier for product teams to build safely and quickly.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with Product, Design, Security, Infrastructure, and AI/ML teams to align technical decisions with customer outcomes and organizational priorities.
- Execution and quality: Own delivery of complex initiatives end-to-end—breaking down ambiguous problems, driving alignment, and ensuring high-quality implementation, testing, rollout, and oncall readiness.
- Mentorship and influence: Mentor senior engineers, review critical designs, elevate engineering standards, and influence technical direction across teams beyond your immediate scope.
- 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and operating large-scale backend or platform systems.
- Proven ability to lead architecture for distributed systems with high reliability, performance, and security requirements.
- Strong expertise in at least two of the following areas: identity/authn/authz, service API design, analytics/telemetry infrastructure, search/retrieval foundations, experimentation platforms, or engagement systems.
- Track record of driving modernization efforts in complex environments (e.g., migrating legacy systems, improving data quality and observability, simplifying architecture).
- Excellent technical judgment and ability to balance speed, stability, and long-term maintainability.
- Strong communication skills: able to write clear design docs, align stakeholders, and lead technical decision-making across teams.
- Experience with cloud-scale identity platforms (SSO, session management, risk signals, account security, privacy controls).
- Familiarity with AI enablement infrastructure, especially data pipelines, engagement signals, retrieval/search systems, and feedback loops.
- Experience building or operating multi-tenant SaaS platforms with strong compliance and security requirements.
- Demonstrated ability to influence org-wide standards and technical strategy (beyond a single team), including mentorship of other tech leads and principals.
Canada Pay Range
$249,700—$337,900 CAD
Dropbox Austin, Texas, USA Office
Austin, TX, United States
Dropbox United States Office
Similar Jobs at Dropbox
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Consumer Web • Productivity • Software • App development • Data Privacy
The role involves designing scalable backend systems for Dropbox's Commerce Platform, focusing on system strategy, reliability, and cross-department collaboration.
Top Skills:
BillingCpqDistributed SystemsEcommerceSalesforce CRM
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Consumer Web • Productivity • Software • App development • Data Privacy
Own and drive technical outcomes for Dropbox, defining long-term strategies. Lead AI adoption, influence roadmaps, and ensure engineering excellence across multiple teams, remaining hands-on in software development.
Top Skills:
AIConcurrencyDatabasesDistributed SystemsFrontendMlMobileSearchStorage Systems
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Consumer Web • Productivity • Software • App development • Data Privacy
The Staff Site Reliability Engineer will develop Dropbox's reliability strategy, enhance operational excellence, and lead cross-team initiatives. Responsibilities include improving monitoring and incident response systems, mentoring engineers, and aligning stakeholders on reliability priorities.
Top Skills:
Ai-Enabled Software DeliveryDebugging ToolsDistributed SystemsIncident ResponseObservability
What you need to know about the Austin Tech Scene
Austin has a diverse and thriving tech ecosystem thanks to home-grown companies like Dell and major campuses for IBM, AMD and Apple. The state’s flagship university, the University of Texas at Austin, is known for its engineering school, and the city is known for its annual South by Southwest tech and media conference. Austin’s tech scene spans many verticals, but it’s particularly known for hardware, including semiconductors, as well as AI, biotechnology and cloud computing. And its food and music scene, low taxes and favorable climate has made the city a destination for tech workers from across the country.
Key Facts About Austin Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 180,500; 13.7% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Dell, IBM, AMD, Apple, Alphabet
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, hardware, cloud computing, software, healthtech
- Funding Landscape: $4.5 billion in VC funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Live Oak Ventures, Austin Ventures, Hinge Capital, Gigafund, KdT Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Silverton Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: University of Texas, Southwestern University, Texas State University, Center for Complex Quantum Systems, Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Texas Advanced Computing Center
