Principal Software Engineer, Data at ID.me in McLean, VA

Job description

Company Overview IDMe is the next-generation digital identity wallet that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with IDMe once and seamlessly login across websites without having to create a new login and verify their identity again. Over 175 million users experience streamlined login and identity verification with IDMe at 22 federal agencies, 50 state government agencies, and more than 100 healthcare organizations. Over 600 consumer brands use IDMe to verify communities and user segments to honor service and build more authentic relationships. IDMe’s technology meets the federal standards for consumer authentication set by the Commerce Department and is approved as a NIST 800-63-3 IAL2 / AAL2 credential service provider by the Kantara Initiative. IDMe is committed to “No Identity Left Behind” to enable all people to have a secure digital identity. To learn more, visit https://network.id.me/ . IDMe is a full-time, in-office culture. Unless a specific job description explicitly states otherwise, all roles are on-site five days per week at one of our offices in McLean, VA; Mountain View, CA; New York City, NY; or Tampa, FL. Certain roles — such as field-based sales or other remote-by-design positions — may have different work arrangements as noted in their individual postings. At IDMe, we embrace the thoughtful use of AI tools in our daily work and there are even occasions where we leverage AI in our hiring process. However, during the interview process, we want to understand your individual skills and experiences. Therefore, we have guidelines on how AI can be appropriately used during your application and interviews which can be found here . Role Overview We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer (SDE6), Data to join our Core Platform Engineering organization and spearhead the architectural evolution of ID.me’s data ecosystem. As ID.me scales as an API-first platform company, we need a high-agency technical leader who can immediately step in, rapidly synthesize our current landscape—across business objectives, technical realities, and system architecture—and define and drive a pragmatic, multi-phase evolution plan for our data platform and data architecture. In this pivotal role, you will serve as the primary technical strategist and hands-on architectural driver for the Data side of ID.me’s platform transformation. You will assess existing relational, event-driven, and graph-based data systems, identify critical bottlenecks and strategic opportunities, and chart a clear path from our current state to a resilient, scalable, cloud-native target architecture. Rather than operating in an ivory tower, you will lead from the front—partnering closely with executive leadership, product, security, compliance, and application engineering teams to align technical execution with high-priority business outcomes across identity verification, fraud prevention, analytics, and AI/ML enablement. This role is based out of our Mountain View, CA or McLean, VA office and requires full-time in-office attendance . Responsibilities Assess & Synthesize Current State: Rapidly build a deep understanding of ID.me’s existing data landscape, technical debt, operational bottlenecks, and business priorities across relational databases (PostgreSQL/AlloyDB/CloudSQL), graph systems, event streaming, and core data APIs. Define & Drive the Data Evolution Plan: Author and own the end-to-end architectural roadmap for ID.me’s data ecosystem—defining clear, incremental milestones that safely evolve legacy patterns into modern, scalable, API-first and event-driven data architectures while continuously delivering business value. Architect Foundational Data Systems: Lead the technical design and implementation of core data platform capabilities, including foundational data APIs, event-driven architectures (Pub/Sub, streaming pipelines), graph data models, encryption/data protection services, and autom