Staff Software Engineer - Security Platform

About Aalyria:

Aalyria is a leading technology company that supplies laser communications technology and temporospatial software-defined networking platforms to the aerospace industry. With technology acquired from Google, Aalyria is at the forefront of innovation in satellite and airborne mesh networks, as well as cislunar and deep-space communications. We are revolutionizing the orchestration and management of planetary mesh networks using any radio or optical spectrum, any orbit, and any hardware across land, sea, air, and space.

Role Overview:

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Security Platform team, you'll set the direction for how Aalyria secures Spacetime. The team owns security for Aalyria products, and we build each capability once so it works the same in every environment Spacetime ships into. A system built this way produces its own compliance evidence. You'll work with product engineers and the infrastructure and developer platform teams to make that the default.

Spacetime runs in commercial cloud, government cloud, and classified or disconnected environments, and that last category shapes the work. Trust decisions must be verifiable offline, at sites we cannot reach, with no upstream to call. Most identity platforms assume a connected world. Ours cannot. Our security platform is evolving, with capabilities that grew up alongside Spacetime being consolidated into one coherent layer with identity at its center. You'll shape that evolution and set the patterns the rest of engineering follows. The people who thrive here bring depth in identity, PKI, and authorization, plus the judgment to make good tradeoffs when requirements pull in different directions.

Key Responsibilities:

Identity & Access

• Build authentication and authorization for Spacetime: token validation, trust anchors, the principal namespace, and the permission model operators configure.
• Design authorization that holds up under delegation, multi-tenancy, and machine-to-machine access.
• Define the access control model for Spacetime infrastructure, including the break-glass path.
• Own the auth SDKs that our engineering teams and customers use to reach Spacetime APIs.

Credentials & Keys

• Own PKI end to end: certificate authorities, issuance policy, rotation, and revocation.
• Issue workload identity and build the libraries services use to present it. Service meshes and infrastructure consume what you issue.
• Own the access model for secrets and keys, and the client libraries teams use to reach them.

Audit & Evidence

• Design audit and structured logging schemas that make every authorization decision reconstructable after the fact.
• Make those records hold up as evidence in regulated and classified environments, including sites we cannot reach.

Partner & Operate

• Run what you build: availability, upgrades, security maintenance, and incident response.
• Threat-model across the platform, and build mitigations that remove classes of vulnerability rather than single findings.
• Set the security standards – hardened images, mesh policy, supply chain and pipeline gates – that the infrastructure and developer platform teams implement in the systems they own.
• Run what you build in production: availability, upgrades, security maintenance, and incident response.
• Set the security standard for systems other teams run, hardened images, supply chain, pipeline gates and work with the platform and developer platform teams who own them.
• Work with product engineers, and turn their requirements into capabilities they adopt on their own.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of backend software engineering on production services, including ownership of systems other teams depend on
• Deep experience in Go, or deep backend experience in a comparable language and readiness to work in Go daily
• Built, or been a core contributor to and design owner of, at least one of: an authentication or authorization system inside a product, an identity provider integration, a certificate authority, or a secrets or key management service
• Firsthand knowledge of the failure modes of token based authentication, including audience confusion, unverified issuers, key confusion, and redirect handling at token endpoints, from having shipped through them
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure
• Experience setting technical direction across teams: writing design docs, driving decisions to closure, and earning adoption without direct authority
• Experience mentoring engineers and raising the quality of design and code review

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building for regulated, disconnected, or high assurance environments
• Experience integrating or operating an OIDC provider such as Zitadel, Keycloak, Okta, Auth0, or comparable
• Experience with authorization at scale: policy engines, RBAC or ReBAC models, or fine grained permission services
• Experience with SPIFFE/SPIRE, Vault, cloud KMS, or HSM backed key management
• Experience with audit logging or evidence generation for FedRAMP, DoD Impact Levels, or a comparable regime
• Experience setting security standards for infrastructure, such as hardened images, supply chain security, or CI/CD pipeline gates
• Experience threat modeling distributed systems
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

What We Offer:

• Innovative Environment: Work at a cutting-edge company shaping the future of aerospace communications.
• Impactful Work: Directly contribute to critical national security programs and initiatives.
• Growth Opportunities: Expand your career with opportunities for professional development and advancement.
• Inclusive Culture: Be part of a collaborative, supportive, and inclusive workplace where your contributions matter.
• Flexibility: Flexible working arrangements including hybrid remote/in-office schedules.
• Compensation and Equity: Competitive salary, comprehensive benefits (401(k), dental, vision, health, life insurance), paid time off, and equity options.

ITAR/EAR Requirements:

This position involves access to export-controlled information. To comply with U.S. government export regulations, applicants must meet one of the following criteria:

(A) Qualify as a U.S. person, which includes:

• U.S. citizen or national
• U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder)
• Refugee under 8 U.S.C. 1157
• Asylee under 8 U.S.C. 1158

(B) Be eligible to access export-controlled information without requiring an export authorization.

(C) Be eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the necessary export authorization from the appropriate U.S. government agency.

The company reserves the right to decline pursuing an export licensing process for legitimate business-related reasons.

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement:

Aalyria is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Qualified applicants from all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.