Software Engineer III – Platform Services

Software Engineer III – Platform Services

Position Summary

This is a mid-level individual contributor on the Platform Services team. This role focuses on building and maintaining the foundational systems that power identity, authentication, and integration capabilities across MeridianLink's multi-product SaaS platform.

Platform Foundation is a small, high-output team. It runs lean by design, with the expectation that the right combination of engineering depth and AI-assisted tooling can achieve platform-scale impact with a minimal footprint. Engineers here are expected to understand the systems they own deeply enough to identify what needs to be built next, flag problems before they become incidents, and ship with the kind of care that keeps downstream product teams unblocked.

The immediate focus of this role is federated identity and authorization infrastructure. The work ahead involves building and extending the platform services that product teams depend on to authenticate users, enforce authorization, and manage access at scale. A strong candidate for this role has hands-on experience with OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, and JWT, understands how authorization frameworks work in practice, and knows what it takes to integrate identity services into real-world applications.

Equally important is how this person approaches their craft. Platform Services run with AI-assisted workflows as a first-class part of how software gets designed, validated, and delivered. Engineers on this team are expected to be fluent users of AI development tools, not just passive consumers of them. If you want a role where AI is a force multiplier and not an afterthought, this team is built around that idea.

This is a fully remote role.

Key Competencies

At this level, competencies reflect technical ownership of well-defined work, growing independence, and the beginning of a mentorship posture toward more junior engineers.

Technical Execution & Delivery

Delivers features end-to-end with limited guidance; takes a scoped requirement through design, implementation, testing, and production release

Independently identifies edge cases and failure modes within the scope of assigned work

Writes clean, maintainable code and participates actively in code review with constructive, specific feedback

Proactively surfaces blockers or ambiguities rather than waiting for check-ins

Identity & Authorization Systems

Applies practical knowledge of federated identity standards including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML 2.0, and JWT

Understands how authorization frameworks function: how they enforce policies, how they integrate into upstream and downstream services, and how access decisions are modeled and evaluated

Reasons clearly about token lifecycle, session management, and the security implications of identity design choices

Integration Engineering

Understands the mechanics of connecting distributed services in a multi-product platform environment

Builds and maintains integrations that are observable, fault-tolerant, and respectful of downstream consumers

Writes and works with API contracts (REST, event-driven patterns) with attention to versioning and backwards compatibility

AI-Forward Engineering

Actively uses AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Codex, etc.) to accelerate design, implementation, and validation

Participates in building and improving AI-assisted workflows and evaluation harnesses that improve the team's delivery throughput

Stays current on how AI tooling is evolving and brings new approaches to the team where they apply

Craft & Professionalism

Writes tests with enough coverage to catch regressions without over-engineering the test suite

Contributes to operational health: monitors what they've shipped, responds to issues, and follows incidents to resolution

Documents what needs to be documented; keeps tribal knowledge out of individual heads and into shared systems

Expected Duties

Identity & Authorization Platform Development

Build and extend platform services that manage federated identity, authentication flows, and authorization enforcement across MeridianLink products

Implement integrations with the centralized identity platform, including token handling, session management, user provisioning, and tenant configuration

Support product teams through their integration process: help them understand the platform's contracts, debug integration issues, and navigate edge cases in multi-tenant identity behavior

Build the tooling, documentation, and examples that make those integrations repeatable and self-service over time

Integration Engineering

Design and implement backend service integrations using common patterns (REST APIs, event-driven messaging, webhook delivery) in Python

Build with multi-product and multi-tenant scenarios in mind: data isolation, tenant-scoped configuration, and cross-product user identity are properties of the platform, not edge cases

Participate in API design reviews with attention to clarity, contract stability, and developer experience for downstream consumers

AI-Assisted Delivery

Use AI development tools as an active part of the delivery workflow: for code generation, design validation, test scaffolding, and investigation

Contribute to AI harness development that helps the team move faster and catch regressions without proportionally increasing manual effort

Share what's working across the team; help establish repeatable patterns for AI-assisted engineering on Platform Foundation

Engineering Craft & Observability

Write tests at the unit, integration, and acceptance level appropriate to what's being built

Instrument services for observability: structured logging, metrics, and alerting that make production behavior visible and actionable

Participate in on-call rotations and follow incidents through to root cause and remediation

Collaboration & Growing Others

Participate in design discussions and code reviews; give and receive feedback constructively

Provide mentorship and review support to L1 and L2 engineers on the team

Contribute to internal documentation, runbooks, and onboarding materials

Qualifications: Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Required Qualifications

Experience:

3-5 years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated ability to own and deliver features independently in a production environment

Hands-on experience building backend services in .NET or Python, including RESTful API development

Demonstrated experience implementing or integrating with federated identity systems using OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML 2.0, and/or JWT in production applications

Practical understanding of authorization frameworks: how policies are modeled, enforced, and integrated into application and platform services

Technical Skills:

Proficiency in .NET or Python for backend service development; familiarity with modern API frameworks (e.g., .NET 9+, FastAPI, etc.)

Working knowledge of identity protocol mechanics: authorization code flow, token introspection, claims-based access, assertion handling, and SSO logout behavior

Experience with multi-tenant SaaS integration patterns, including tenant-scoped configuration and user identity across application boundaries

Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS preferred), including relevant managed services for networking, compute, and secrets management

Proficiency with standard development tooling: Git, CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Docker), and automated testing

Active use of AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Codex, or equivalent) as part of a daily engineering workflow

Preferred Qualifications

Identity & Authorization Depth:

Prior experience working with a commercial or open-source identity platform (e.g., an OIDC provider, IAM system, or enterprise SSO solution) in an engineering capacity, not just as a consumer

Experience modeling and implementing fine-grained authorization: RBAC, ABAC, or policy-based access control systems

Familiarity with token security considerations including signing, expiration, revocation, and safe storage patterns

Regulated or Platform Environments:

Prior experience building software in a financial services, fintech, or otherwise regulated technology environment

Experience building internal platform capabilities used by other engineering teams, not just end-user-facing features

Exposure to SOC 2 or similar compliance frameworks from an engineering perspective

AI-Assisted Engineering:

Experience contributing to AI harnesses, evaluation pipelines, or tooling that improves engineering workflow throughput

Comfort using AI tools not just for code completion but for design exploration, test generation, and investigation

Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent demonstrated experience

What Success Looks Like

A successful hire integrates quickly into the team's delivery rhythm, picks up the identity and integration domain with focus, and begins shipping production contributions within the first weeks. Within the first few months, they have built enough context to work largely independently on scoped features, are participating meaningfully in code reviews, and have demonstrated the kind of operational ownership -- shipping, monitoring, and standing behind their work -- that keeps a small team running well.

Over time, impact is measured by the quality and reliability of what they've shipped, how much they've reduced the platform's dependence on tribal knowledge, and how effectively they've supported product teams integrating with the identity platform. Engineers who thrive here do so because they care about the craft, want to operate at the leading edge of AI-assisted development, and are motivated by building infrastructure that other teams depend on to deliver real product value.