Staff Software Engineer (AppSec)

Harness is the AI Software Delivery Platform company, led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal (founder of AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7B). Harness has raised approximately $570M in funding and is valued at $5.5B, backed by leading investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Unusual Ventures, Citi Ventures, and more. As AI accelerates code creation, the real bottleneck has shifted to everything after the code – testing, deployments, application security, reliability, compliance, and cost optimization. Harness brings AI and automation to this “outer loop,” helping teams ship software faster while maintaining security and governance throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle. Powered by Harness AI and the Software Delivery Knowledge Graph, the Harness Platform applies deep context and intelligent automation across the software delivery lifecycle with governance and policy-driven controls embedded throughout the platform. Over the past year, Harness powered over 185M deployments, 82M builds, 18T flag evaluations, 8M security scans, 9.1B optimized tests, 3T protected API calls, and helped manage $2.8B in cloud spend — enabling customers like United Airlines, Morningstar, and Choice Hotels to accelerate releases by up to 75%, reduce cloud costs by up to 60%, and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency. With a global team across 14 offices and 25 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI software delivery — and we’re looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster. Position Summary This role comes under the AppSec Foundations charter, focused on designing and developing core authentication, authorization, and common services infrastructure that powers Harness's security ecosystem. The team is responsible for building foundational RBAC systems, service-to-service authentication, audit logging, and common security services that enable secure access control across all Harness modules including AppSec Platform, CI/CD, and other product offerings. The Foundations team serves as the security backbone for Harness's multi-product platform, providing essential authentication and authorization services that ensure secure, scalable access management across the entire software delivery lifecycle. About the Role You will design and implement scalable authentication and authorization systems using modern RBAC patterns and industry best practices You will build high-performance, low-latency microservices for identity management, token validation, and access control that serve millions of API calls You will develop audit logging and compliance systems that meet enterprise security requirements and regulatory standards You will collaborate closely with AppSec Platform, CI/CD, and other product teams to integrate security services seamlessly You will solve complex distributed systems challenges around service-to-service authentication, token management, and secrets rotation You will work with SRE teams to ensure high availability and operational excellence of critical security infrastructure You will contribute to API design and GraphQL schemas that provide secure, efficient access to organizational resources About You Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field Experience: 6-10 years of backend engineering experience with strong focus on security, authentication, and distributed systems Core Technologies: Proficiency in JVM-based languages (Java, Scala, Kotlin) with expertise in building production-grade microservices Security Expertise: Deep understanding of authentication protocols (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT), RBAC systems, and modern authorization patterns API Development: Experience with RESTful APIs, GraphQL, and designing secure API architectures with proper access controls Distributed Systems: Strong knowledge of distributed system patterns, service mesh architectures, and microservices design principles Databa ... (truncated, view full listing at source)