Senior Software Engineer (Ruby on Rails, Identity)

About the Position

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our client, one of the world’s largest digital reading subscription platforms, providing access to ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, documents, and exclusive content for more than 200 million monthly visitors with more than 2 million active subscribers across nearly every country.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will play a key role in building and maintaining secure protocols that protect user credentials and data during authentication, while giving users a frictionless, seamless login and sign-up experience - and keeping authentication methods compliant with relevant security standards, regulations, and industry best practices.

This position begins on Customer Support/self-service initiatives (e.g., self-service account recovery and cancellation, reducing support load) and then transitions to core Identity roadmap projects (authentication, login & account-creation improvements, session management).

Responsibilities

• Build self-service flows that reduce Customer Support load (e.g., account recovery, cancellation) and reduce friction across support tools & workflows (Zendesk, Forethought, Admin panels).
• Build and enhance identity-related functionality: authentication, session management, and user data protection.
• Improve login and account creation (e.g., passwordless/magic links/passkeys, One Tap), MFA, and identity verification.
• Integrate and optimize risk-based fraud detection and other security measures to mitigate threats.
• Design and implement user data retention and deletion workflows in compliance with regulations (e.g., GDPR).
• Implement projects with attention to quality, maintainability, performance, scale, and observability.
• Write clear technical documentation based on project proposals.
• Work closely with product, security, and legal teams on identity initiatives.

Requirements

• 4–6 years of professional software development experience.
• Strong written communication skills (we are a remote-first company).
• Proficiency in Ruby on Rails.
• Experience with JavaScript/React (≈1 year is sufficient - this is a backend-focused role with some frontend).
• API integration skills, with a focus on authentication.
• Experience working with relational databases at scale, and proficient with SQL.
• Experience with complex backend systems, including MFA, email verification, and risk-based fraud detection.
• Familiarity with version control (Git).
• Enthusiasm - teammates who are ready to build and improve the way we build.
• Participate in the Identity squad on-call program. The 24/7 on-call rotation is shared among engineers and occurs every three weeks, with one week of on-call duty per engineer (historically, on-call is uneventful - about one page a month).
• Good overlap with the EST timezone (09:00–13:00 EST).
• AI Fluency: Comfortable using AI tools to accelerate development - and able to explain, defend, and own everything you produce with AI assistance.

Nice to Have

• Security fundamentals - best practices for handling sensitive user data and transactions.
• Experience with Customer Support tools such as Zendesk and Forethought.
• Familiarity with CIAM, SSO, SAML, MFA, and federation concepts.

We Offer

• Competitive Pay: We offer a compensation that reflects your skills and experience.
• Remote Flexibility: Work from anywhere – our team is distributed across the globe.
• Professional Growth: Access to continuous learning opportunities, including paid courses, certifications, mentorship.
• Work-Life Balance: 30 days of paid vacation and 6 paid sick days per year, plus flexible hours.
• Inclusive Culture: We embrace diversity and foster a culture of trust, transparency, and mutual respect.
• Cool Perks: Join our virtual team events, get a budget for your home office setup, and enjoy access to exclusive content and tools.

About the Project

Client is one of the world’s leading digital reading subscription platforms, offering access to ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, documents, and exclusive content. The engineering organization consists of multiple specialized teams, including Platform Engineering, ML Infrastructure, Infrastructure, and Big Data.

The Identity team owns authentication for a platform with real scale - 200 million monthly visitors, over 2 million active subscribers, and several million login and sign-up requests daily. The team’s work spans Product, Infrastructure, Security, and Customer Support, building the secure protocols that protect user credentials while keeping login and sign-up frictionless and compliant with industry standards.

This role starts on Customer Support and self-service initiatives - think account recovery and cancellation flows - before moving into core Identity roadmap work like authentication, login/account-creation improvements, and session management.

AI tools like Claude Code and Cursor are core to the engineering culture here, used for writing code, debugging, and vetting architecture. Ownership still matters: engineers must fully understand and defend every line they ship. The hiring process includes a live AI Fluency assessment to evaluate this.

Tech Stack

• Architecture: Ruby on Rails monolith.
• Database: MySQL.
• Background jobs: Sidekiq (Redis-backed).
• Auth mechanisms: OAuth2, JWT, ROPG; Auth0.
• Cloud: AWS (mainly reading secrets from AWS Secrets Manager).
• Testing: Engineers own their own testing (unit + integration, RSpec). No dedicated QA.
• DevOps: Not expected for this role.
• Frontend: React ≈1 year.
• System design: Primarily implementing within an existing design, but we expect engineers to think about the system holistically and understand the tradeoffs of their changes.
• Local dev OS: The dev environment runs remotely via Devkube (Kubernetes), so local OS is not critical - macOS or Linux both work.

Team Composition

4 engineers - 3 mostly backend with some frontend, 1 pure backend.

Working Conditions

• Work schedule: Standard working day (overlap with EST 09:00–13:00 required).
• Participate in the Identity squad on-call program. The 24/7 on-call rotation is shared among engineers and occurs every three weeks, with one week of on-call duty per engineer. Historically, on-call is uneventful - about one page a month.
• Fully Remote
• Long-term project (12+ months).

Interview Process

• HR Interview: Initial discussion with recruiter (30-45 min.)
• KITRUM’s Technical Interview (90 min.)
• Client Interviews:
  • Technical Screen (45 min.)
  • Database & Data Modeling (60 min.)
  • AI Fluency (60 min.)
  • Hiring Manager Wrap (25-30 min.)

Shape Your Future with Us - Apply Now

What’s next?

1

Apply → Get connected with our Talent Acquisition team

→ 2

Pass English Check → Talk to our Talent Acquisition Manager

→ 3

Pass Technical Interview → Talk to our Technical Specialist

→ 4

Get acquainted and chat with our Client → You’re on board!

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