Software Engineer
About the job
- Have built and operated production systems.
- Be comfortable working across the technology stack and know when to specialize deeply.
- Communicate clearly, especially in writing.
- Use AI tools effectively.
- Operate independently and deliver in a modern engineering environment.
- Take on important projects and deliver them to production.
- Build features end-to-end, from data model to user interface, and own them after launch.
- Make decisions about architecture, scope, and tradeoffs independently.
- Work closely with customers, design, and product to identify what is worth building.
- Contribute to code quality, system design, and operational reliability.
- Have deep experience in identity, security, distributed systems, or large-scale data systems.
- Have worked at a fast-growing startup and understand its demands.
- Have built products or platforms for other developers.
C1.ai is building a horizontal identity platform
Identity is becoming the control plane for modern companies. Every organization runs on dozens—sometimes hundreds—of systems that need to answer the same basic question: who can do what, when, and why?
The old approach doesn’t hold up. It’s either IT teams duct-taping systems together, or rigid IGA tools that only work across a narrow set of HR and SSO integrations. That’s not going to cut it for the next decade.
We’re building something more foundational: a horizontal identity platform that any company—and increasingly, any AI agent—can plug into to understand and manage access. SaaS apps, infrastructure, internal tools, AI agents—if it has a concept of “who,” it should connect to us.
We’re still small, and we move fast. If you want to help build this from the ground up, you’ll have real ownership here.
How engineering works here
We don’t hire into narrow roles—we hire strong engineers.
Most work comes from a shared pool of high-impact projects, and we assign it based on where it matters most. Some teams own specific areas where deep expertise pays off, but we don’t optimize for rigid ownership. We optimize for shipping.
By default, engineers here are generalists. You’re expected to take things end-to-end: design the data model, build the API, ship the UI, roll it out, and talk to customers. The lines between frontend, backend, and infra aren’t where the real work happens.
That said, we do hire specialists. If you’ve gone deep in areas like connectors, performance, security, or distributed systems—and you’ve shipped meaningful work there—we want to talk. Just know that even specialists here step outside their lane when needed.
We hire across levels, but the baseline is consistent: you can operate independently and deliver in a modern engineering environment. That usually maps to a strong senior level or above. We hold a high bar, and every new hire is expected to raise it.
What you’ll do
- Take on projects that matter and see them through to production.
- Build features end-to-end, from data model to UI, and own them after launch.
- Make decisions about architecture, scope, and tradeoffs without waiting around for direction.
- Work closely with customers, design, and product to figure out what’s actually worth building.
- Contribute to a high standard of code quality, system design, and operational reliability.
What we look for
You likely:
- Have built and operated real production systems.
- Are comfortable moving across the stack, and know when to go deep.
- Prefer getting things done over debating ownership or process.
- Communicate clearly, especially in writing.
- Use AI tools because they make you more effective.
You might also:
- Have deep experience in identity, security, distributed systems, or large-scale data systems.
- Have worked at a fast-growing startup and know what that environment demands.
- Have built products or platforms for other developers.
How we work
- Impact matters more than ownership.
- We’d rather ship something real than talk about it.
- People here are trusted to operate independently.
- If something isn’t working, we fix it properly—we don’t paper over it.
- Using AI effectively is expected, not optional.
Compensation & benefits
Salary range: $180k – $250k
- Meaningful equity
- Full medical, dental, and vision coverage
- In-office in Portland, San Francisco, or New York
- Solid benefits across the board
Hiring philosophy
We care about both excellence and grit. You don’t need to check every single box to apply—if this feels like the kind of place you want to build, we’d like to hear from you.
c1.ai is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.
About the company
C1 provides an AI-native identity security platform unifying IGA, IAM, and PAM into one system. It manages human, non-human, and AI identities by automating access requests, provisioning, and reviews with dynamic and just-in-time controls and AI recommendations. The platform offers real-time visibility into permissions and integrates with many cloud apps and infrastructure through AI agents that automate identity operations. Its goal is to reduce identity sprawl, speed access decisions, and automate identity workflows so AI identities can outnumber human users while maintaining security.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
N/A
Get referred to C1
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- October 1, 2026 LLM Gateway routes model calls by sensitivity and cost.
- August 11, 2026 Jeff St. Clair joined as CRO to accelerate revenue.
- Customers including Ramp, Zscaler, Instacart, Brex, and DoorDash validate enterprise demand.
What critics are saying
- Okta, Microsoft, and CyberArk bundle identity controls faster than C1 can specialize.
- C1's strategy depends on Anthropic, MCP, and XAA adoption across enterprises.
- Autonomous agents expand blast radius; one governance failure breaks C1's trust story.
What makes C1 unique
- C1 unifies IGA, IAM, and PAM for humans, workloads, and agents.
- June 18, 2026 EMA launched day one with Anthropic's Claude support.
- C1 Autonomous Worker governs identity tasks inside the same policy engine.
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Benefits
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- Company Equity
Company News
Workday has signed a deal to acquire C1.ai, an identity platform that manages system access for people and AI agents. It announced the agreement on October 13, 2026, at Workday Rising in Las Vegas. No price was disclosed. C1.ai connects to systems such as email, CRM, code repositories, and cloud infrastructure. It gives each person and agent the right access and removes it when no longer needed. The need is growing. C1.ai's research shows 95% of large US companies already run autonomous agents, yet Deloitte found only 21% have a mature way to govern them. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2027, which ends January 31, 2027, subject to customary closing conditions.
Workday to acquire C1.ai, a leading agentic identity platform for people and agents. Business · OCT 13, 2026 PR Newswire With C1.ai, Workday Can Give Every Person and AI Agent the Right Access from the Day They Join to the Day They Leave - and Everywhere in Between LAS VEGAS... With C1.ai, Workday Can Give Every Person and AI Agent the Right Access from the Day They Join to the Day They Leave - and Everywhere in Between LAS VEGAS, Oct. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Workday Rising 2026 - Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), the trusted agentic platform for HR, finance, and IT, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire C1.ai, a leading agentic identity platform for people and agents. C1.ai connects to the systems a business runs on - from email and CRM to code repositories, finance systems, and cloud infrastructure - giving each person and agent the right access at the right time and removing it the moment it's no longer needed. Most organizations manage employee access across hundreds of applications through manual service tickets, spreadsheets, and periodic reviews as workers join, move, and leave. The rapid adoption of AI agents has accelerated this challenge: C1.ai's research shows that 95% of large U.S. companies already run autonomous agents, yet according to Deloitte's State of AI research, only 21% report having a mature way to govern them. Organizations need to know who and what has access, why they have it, and when to remove it. Without those controls, AI agents can become lawless, creating security and compliance risks across the business. Every new hire, job change, and exit is a Workday event. Workday already governs the people, money, and agents at the heart of the enterprise. With C1.ai, Workday will become the identity governance layer for people, money, and agents. Every employee and agent using Workday can have the right access to the apps, data, and systems they need, from the day they join to the day they leave, and every move in between. "Today's companies run on a combined workforce of people and AI agents," said Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product and technology, Workday. "With C1.ai, we'll help secure that workforce by managing and enforcing exactly who - and what - has access to connected apps and systems, giving each person and agent the right access at the right moment to make work easier, safer, and more compliant." "Enterprises can't secure the AI era using yesterday's IT tickets," said Alex Bovee, CEO and co-founder, C1.ai. "Workday is the operational heart of the enterprise, and by bringing C1.ai's identity governance directly into that core, we'll be able to manage access for every human and agent in real time - making work faster without making it less secure." Managing Access for Every Worker and Agent in One Place Imagine a new hire spending their first few days filing tickets just to get access to Slack, Jira, and the finance dashboard - and then keeping that access long after changing roles. Workday and C1.ai will bring these processes together so that new hires get the right access when they start, employees gain and lose access as their roles change, and departing workers are removed promptly. This translates to less time waiting on system permissions for employees, fewer manual approvals for managers, and fewer open doors for attackers. Complete Visibility and Control for Agents Some agents act on behalf of an employee and should only reach part of what that person can, while others work on their own with broader access that needs close oversight. An agent that was retired last quarter shouldn't still be able to get in, and most companies don't yet have a way to manage access at that level of detail. The Workday Agent System of Record already gives companies one place to see and manage their agents. C1.ai will build on that, going beyond registering agents to also governing what they can access across Workday and other enterprise systems. Once registered, an agent can receive the access it needs, when it needs it, and lose that access immediately when its work or role ends. Transaction Details & Availability The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2027, ending January 31, 2027, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. BofA Securities is serving as financial advisor to Workday and Orrick is serving as its legal advisor. Qatalyst is serving as financial advisor to C1.ai and Ashurst Perkins Coie is serving as its legal advisor. About Workday Workday operates at the heart of the enterprise - HR, finance, and IT - where the margin for error is effectively zero. By tightly coupling AI with the context, guardrails, and trusted processes that run the business, Workday goes beyond AI that assists with work to agents that are capable of driving measurable outcomes. More than 11,500 organizations worldwide, including more than 65% of the Fortune 500, trust Workday to deliver. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com. (C) 2026 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. About C1.ai C1.ai is the identity platform for the AI era. Our platform connects humans and agents to enterprise systems with scoped access, enforced policies, human approval, and a record of every action. With C1.ai, the fastest path to AI adoption at scale is the governed path, giving organizations visibility and control without sacrificing security or slowing innovation. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding Workday's intent to acquire C1.ai, the expected timing and closing of the acquisition, and the expected benefits and capabilities of the combined solutions. These forward-looking statements are based only on currently available information and our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. If the risks materialize, assumptions prove incorrect, or we experience unexpected changes in circumstances, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements, and therefore you should not rely on any forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, the satisfaction of closing conditions, regulatory approvals, our ability to successfully integrate C1.ai's operations and technology, and other risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including our most recent report on Form 10-Q or Form 10-K and other reports that we have filed and will file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release, except as required by law. Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available. SOURCE Workday Inc. Published by News Desk · WeeklyReviewer The WeeklyReviewer news desk monitors breaking developments around the clock - sourcing, verifying, and publishing real-time industry news across business, technology, politics, science, sports, and world affairs. Every story that comes through the Live Wire is reviewed for accuracy before publication, keeping our readers ahead of the curve without the noise.
C1.ai has launched C1 LLM Gateway, a platform that governs enterprise AI model routing by sensitivity and cost. The system attributes each model call to its originating user, agent, or application, enabling organisations to control what data leaves their network and track associated costs before invoices arrive. The gateway implements policy-based routing that directs sensitive work to customer-controlled infrastructure whilst routing other tasks to the fastest or cheapest providers. It enables immediate revocation of model access and allows teams to set time-limited budgets for users and applications. C1 LLM Gateway is available today as the final release of C1 Launch Week. The company serves clients including Ramp, Zscaler, Qualtrics, and DoorDash.
C1.ai launches C1 AppHub, a self-hosted platform for the apps your teams build. September 28, 2026 09:00 ET | Source: C1 C1 AppHub is a system that deploys, authenticates, and sets permissions for the applications your teams build. It ships today as a public repository, with a skills file that enables an AI coding agent to build and launch a governed application with a single prompt. First of four launches in C1 Launch Week. SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - AI has turned everyone into a builder. Teams are spinning up their own apps in days, not months, and organizations need a way to securely govern and manage them. Today C1 launched C1 AppHub, which makes the fastest path to building an app the governed path. AI coding tools make it possible to build an internal app in a morning. Sharing it with the rest of the team is where things get harder. Builders still have to figure out hosting, sign-in, permissions, and credentials, so many apps stay local or rely on workarounds like hand written user lists and shared API keys. C1 AppHub gives teams a straightforward way to deploy those apps and make them available to the people who need them. This gives teams a proven place to deploy and operate internal apps, packaging the best practices C1.ai uses internally into a self-hosted platform they can run in their own cloud. Not only are apps now easy to build, but they're also easy to share and manage. C1 AppHub also connects to C1.ai for the hard parts of governance. The repository includes a skills file that gives an AI coding agent the instructions for building an application that signs in through C1.ai, asks C1.ai for permissions decisions, draws its credentials from C1.ai rather than holding them, and routes its model calls through C1.ai. Paired with the C1 AppHub MCP server, the same prompt that builds the application also publishes it, so it goes from a blank repository to a running app without a separate deployment step. What a team gets on day one: * Your data stays yours. Run C1 AppHub inside your own cloud account, on the infrastructure you already use. The workload, the network, and the data stay where they already are. * Make the fundamentals easy to adopt. C1 AppHub gives teams a standard pattern for adding sign-in, permissions, credentials, and other core primitives to the applications they build, so what they build can be used across the company. * Builders ship instead of waiting. Give them a place to build so they can ship the internal apps they need instead of routing every small tool through procurement or letting it appear unmanaged. * Security sees every app the day it ships. Each application built on C1 AppHub appears in C1.ai's identity graph with an owner, sign-in configuration, and permissions, so access reviews and offboarding cover it like any other app from the first day. C1 AppHub makes the governed version the easy one to build, so teams can ship applications quickly while the company keeps them visible, accountable, and secure. "The agentic enterprise is going to use SaaS, but also build 1000's of apps that are bespoke to their organization," said Alex Bovee, CEO and co-founder of C1.ai. "AI has turned everyone into a builder. AppHub is the place to run those workloads with built in governance and security." C1.ai's platform does three jobs. It governs the workforce: who exists, what they can reach, and the reviews and evidence that prove it. It runs the agents those people put to work: the models they call, the tools they reach, the credentials they hold. And it is where the work happens: the multi-step jobs C1 Agents carry out, and the applications your own people build on C1 AppHub. Together, these capabilities let teams build quickly without giving up governance. Through October 2, C1 Launch Week takes a deep dive into the capabilities that power C1 AppHub. See it at c1.ai. C1.ai is the identity platform for the AI era. Our platform connects humans and agents to enterprise systems with scoped access, enforced policies, human approval, and a record of every action. With C1.ai, the fastest path to AI adoption at scale is the governed path, giving organizations visibility and control without sacrificing security or slowing innovation. Companies such as Ramp, Zscaler, Qualtrics, and DoorDash trust C1.ai to govern identity, secure agents, and empower their teams to put AI to work.
C1 appoints Jeff St. Clair as Chief Revenue Officer to accelerate growth in the agentic enterprise era. Former Halcyon, Automox, and Palo Alto Networks leader joins C1 at the inflection point of enterprise AI adoption to scale the industry's leading identity platform. August 11, 2026 09:00 ET | Source: C1 SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - C1, the AI-native identity platform, today announced the appointment of Jeff St. Clair as Chief Revenue Officer. St. Clair will lead the company's global go-to-market organization as enterprises accelerate AI adoption and increasingly look to identity as the foundation for governing every human, non-human identity, and AI agent. St. Clair joins at what he calls a once-in-a-career convergence. "This is a transformational time for C1," said St. Clair. "Enterprise AI adoption is happening with tremendous urgency, boards are pushing companies to leverage AI, and yet the modern tech stack doesn't support them to do it securely. C1 is built for this moment. I'm excited to help our customers embrace AI with the security and automation they need to move faster." St. Clair brings more than two decades of enterprise software and cybersecurity leadership behind some of the industry's most significant platform shifts. He ran worldwide sales at Evident.io, growing it from an early-stage startup through its acquisition by Palo Alto Networks, where it became Prisma Cloud. Prior to Evident.io, he joined Ironport as one of its early employees and helped scale it into its acquisition by Cisco. Most recently, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Halcyon and at Automox. "Jeff has repeatedly helped build category-defining cybersecurity companies during moments of major market transformation," said Alex Bovee, CEO and co-founder of C1. "He knows how to translate breakthrough technology into customer adoption, build world-class teams, and scale companies defining entirely new markets. That's exactly the leadership we need as C1 helps organizations fearlessly adopt AI at enterprise scale." St. Clair's own path shaped the way he builds teams. He began his career in the Bay Area from the ground up as a business development representative (BDR), and having worked nearly every role on the way to the top gives him a rare empathy for the teams he now leads, the instinct for building world-class organizations that C1 is betting on to carry it through this next chapter. C1 is the control plane for the agentic enterprise, empowering companies to adopt AI fearlessly. Its platform secures human and non-human identities, automates access, and accelerates AI adoption. With C1, the fastest path to AI adoption at scale is the governed path, giving organizations visibility and control without sacrificing security or slowing innovation. Companies such as Ramp, Zscaler, Instacart, and Brex trust C1 to power their agentic transformation. [email protected]