Description
Staff Software Engineer, Frontend — Authentication & Identity
At realtor.com®, sign-in is the front door. Every saved home, every saved search, every personalized recommendation and every lead depends on knowing who the consumer is — across web, mobile web and native, and across every subdomain we operate. We are looking for a Staff Engineer to serve as the technical anchor for the frontend of our Authentication & Identity platform, owning the client-side architecture that millions of authenticated sessions pass through every day.
The Role
As a Staff Engineer, you won't just write code; you will define how authentication is built and consumed across every consumer surface at realtor.com®. Auth is the one system every team depends on and no team wants to own — you will own it, and you will make it something other engineers reach for rather than route around. You will balance hands-on development with high-level system design, ensuring identity is seamless for consumers and boring for the engineers who integrate with it.
Architectural Leadership: Own the end-to-end client architecture of our identity platform — our React/Next.js consumer web surfaces, the shared auth libraries every other team consumes, and their integration with Auth0 and our GraphQL gateway. We are actively consolidating multiple co-existing auth implementations onto one platform; you will lead that convergence and decide what the single path looks like.
Auth at Scale, Without Friction: Drive the client-side work behind new authentication methods — passkeys/WebAuthn, one-time passcodes, social and federated sign-in — and own token lifecycle, session continuity and cross-subdomain identity in the browser. You are responsible for both halves of the tradeoff: reducing forced sign-outs and abandoned registrations while holding the security line on OAuth 2.0/OIDC, PKCE and token handling.
Reliability and Observability: Auth failures are silent, and users don't file tickets — they leave. You will define what "healthy" means for the sign-in path, instrument it, and make regressions visible before they show up in conversion. You will lead frontend resiliency and error-strategy work so that a degraded dependency downgrades the experience instead of ending the session.
AI Strategy & Governance: Lead the integration of AI coding assistants and LLMs into the SDLC. You are responsible for the "human-in-the-loop" verification of AI-generated code regarding security, performance, and long-term maintainability — a bar that is higher, not lower, in code that mints and stores credentials.
Cross-Functional Influence: Partner with Product, Security, Data Science and Design, and with the platform teams who consume your libraries. Much of your impact lands through other teams' repositories, which means influence, clear architecture docs and RFCs matter as much as your own commits.
About You
Technical Mastery: 8+ years of experience (8+ in modern stacks) with deep expertise in production React architectures and in browser-based authentication — OAuth 2.0/OIDC, PKCE, token storage and refresh, session and cookie semantics, and the failure modes each of them has in the real world.
Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
Identity Depth: Hands-on experience with a managed identity provider (Auth0, Okta, Cognito or equivalent) beyond the happy path — migrations between providers or auth systems, custom login flows, bot protection, step-up verification, and the anonymous-to-known user transition.
Systems Thinker: You reason about identity as a distributed system, not a login form. Comfortable with cloud-native design (AWS), micro-frontend and shared-library boundaries, versioning and rollout of code that other teams depend on, and building for "the next 10x" of traffic.
Operational Excellence: Deep understanding of automated deployment, progressive rollout behind feature flags, and instrumentation. You have run a high-risk migration on a live, high-traffic path and know how to ramp it, watch it, and roll it back.
Mentorship & Culture: A natural leader who raises the bar for the entire engineering organization through code reviews, RFCs, and a growth-oriented mindset — including for the many engineers outside your team who integrate with your platform.
Data-Driven: Professional experience implementing complex A/B testing frameworks and deriving actionable insights from high-volume traffic data, and the judgment to know when an auth change must not be A/B tested at all.
How We Reward You
Comprehensive Health: Medical, Rx, dental, and vision coverage from day one.
Financial Future: 401(k) with 3.5% match and a unique Student Debt Retirement Savings Match.
Balance: Flexible Time Off, 13 Paid Holidays, and 8 hours of paid Volunteer Time.
Growth: Tuition reimbursement and 1:1 personalized financial planning.
