Principal Software Engineer

About Ping Identity: At Ping Identity, we believe in making digital experiences both secure and seamless for all users, without compromise. We call this digital freedom. And it's not just something we provide our customers. It's something that inspires our company. People don't come here to join a culture that's built on digital freedom. They come to cultivate it. Our intelligent, cloud identity platform lets people shop, work, bank, and interact wherever and however they want. Without friction. Without fear. While protecting digital identities is at the core of our technology, protecting individual identities is at the core of our culture. We champion every identity. One of our core values, Respect Individuality, reminds us to celebrate differences so you are empowered to bring your authentic self to work. We're headquartered in Denver, Colorado and we have offices and employees around the globe. We serve the largest, most demanding enterprises worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune 100. At Ping Identity, we're changing the way people and businesses think about cybersecurity, digital experiences, and identity and access management. We are seeking a hands-on Principal Software Engineer to build PingOne Privilege, our cloud-native Zero Trust privileged access platform, and the AI security capabilities that protect how enterprises adopt agentic AI. This is a coding role — you will design, ship, and own production systems alongside the rest of the team. Key Responsibilities: Build the Platform: Design and ship core services for PingOne Privilege, our cloud-native platform in Go — just-in-time access, credential-less authentication, and Zero Trust access to multi-cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) and on-prem resources. Agentic AI Security: Build our AI security capabilities hands-on — MCP gateways, AI agent identity and governance, and real-time guardrails that detect and block prompt injection and data exfiltration. Distributed Systems: Develop highly available, multi-region services on Kubernetes with durable workflow orchestration and distributed data stores, and own them through design, implementation, and production. Identity & Access Protocols: Implement deep integrations with identity protocols (OAuth2/OIDC, SAML, SCIM, certificate-based auth) and build secure proxy and gateway layers for SSH, RDP, Kubernetes, databases, and web applications. Technical Leadership: Raise the bar through code reviews and design reviews, mentor engineers by working alongside them, and set the example for high-quality, secure, maintainable code. Qualifications: Experience: 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with 4+ years at a Principal or Staff level building large-scale security or identity products — as an individual contributor who writes and ships production code daily. Security & Identity Expertise: Deep working knowledge of IAM/PAM — privileged access, secrets and key management, session brokering, least-privilege and Zero Trust architectures — with hands-on depth in OAuth2/OIDC and PKI. Tech Stack: Expert-level proficiency in Go (or strong systems-language background with willingness to work in Go), Cloud Native technologies (AWS/Azure/GCP, Kubernetes), and distributed data stores (Cassandra or similar NoSQL); experience with workflow engines (e.g., Temporal) a plus. AI Systems (preferred): Experience building or securing LLM-based systems — agent frameworks, MCP, model-based threat detection, or AI guardrails. Leadership: Influence through code and design, not title — proven ability to drive cross-team technical decisions while staying in the critical path of delivery. Education: BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience. Life at Ping: We believe in and facilitate a flexible, collaborative work environment. We’re growing quickly, but remain true to the innovative, can-do startup values that got us here. Most importantly, we keep hiring talented, smart, fun, and genuinely nice peop…