Job at a glance
About AuthZed: We are the creators and maintainers of SpiceDB and the authorization infrastructure that companies around the world depend on to keep their engineering teams focused on what matters most - their own product. We are a Series A company, fixing broken access control with products that eliminate complex permission management while delivering enterprise-scale performance and consistent access control.
We are a fully remote company with employees across the US, Canada, and Europe. We’re a hardworking and close-knit group with a software-driven culture (yep, even our GTM team understands and loves this technology)! We bring integrity to all our interactions, fostering confidence in decision making - trusting and respecting each voice on our team, every day. Company Values: Agency: Everyone should have the capability, freedom, and confidence to bring about changes to our business and product.
Organizational processes exist to clearly define our goals, but not restrict how progress is made. Collaboration: Success is defined in various dimensions and no single person can be an expert in all of them. Without valuing the opinions of others, finding compromises, and sharing mutual trust and respect, you cannot arrive at the best possible solution. Open-mindedness: Without asking questions, testing assumptions, and questioning our pre-existing biases, we risk operating within an echo-chamber.
We celebrate the representation of diverse perspectives and backgrounds as a catalyst for creating an inclusive work environment that everyone can appreciate. About the Role: At AuthZed, we’re building the infrastructure that makes fine-grained authorization possible at scale. We are the creators of SpiceDB, the open-source permissions database inspired by Google Zanzibar, as well as a growing ecosystem of open-source and commercial products built around it.
As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll work on SpiceDB and other open-source projects across the AuthZed ecosystem. You’ll tackle challenging problems at the intersection of distributed systems, databases, cloud infrastructure, and authorization—from query planning and execution to performance, scalability, reliability, and operability. Operating in an agile startup environment, your technical leadership and innovation will directly influence our strategic trajectory.
You will collaborate with a high-performing engineering team to address complex challenges in distributed systems, cloud architecture, and fine-grained authorization models, delivering scalable solutions to AuthZed’s global enterprise customer base. AuthZed’s organizational culture is built upon principles of mutual respect, transparent communication, and psychological safety. We empower team members to exercise initiative and pursue well-considered technical strategies while maintaining a firm commitment to professional well-being and operational boundaries.
We support professional advancement through structured mentorship and objective recognition of achievement. Our inclusive, highly collaborative workplace leverages diverse perspectives to drive both individual career growth and organizational excellence. What you’ll own: Build SpiceDB and the AuthZed OSS ecosystem: Research, design, implement, test, and release features across SpiceDB and other open-source AuthZed projects.
Champion of Quality: Drive best practices in software development, testing, and CI/CD to ensure our platform is robust, scalable, and always on the leading edge. Embrace the " operate what you build" philosophy, taking end-to-end ownership of your work - from development and deployment to production operations, and participate in on-call rotation. Problem Solver: Troubleshoot correctness, stability or performance issues related to statement planning and execution in a complex distributed system.
Work in the open: Collaborate with users and contributors, review contributions, participate in technical discussions, and help evolve our open-source p