Backend Engineer, Security Platform

Job Description

Vannevar builds AI systems for the Department of War's most consequential missions. We have 125 deployments across every branch and combatant command spanning our core platform and five distinct products. An an example of how we work, when major combat operations started with Iran, we fielded a new product supporting 24/7 operations and 9,000+ users in three months.How we build is our advantage: we deploy forward with the people who own the mission. Our engineers, product team, and CTO deploy forward to the point of friction, including visiting units in Ukraine. We focus on embedding directly with operational units supporting great power competition with China, combat operations with Iran, and counter-narcotics missions.

About the role

At Vannevar, we’re building the next generation of mission software that powers decision-making across the national security, defense, and intelligence communities. Protecting the sensitive data and workflows behind those missions is foundational to our platform. The Security Platform team builds the authentication, authorization, and identity infrastructure that ensures the right people and services have access to the right resources—securely, reliably, and with minimal friction.

In this role, you’ll join a small, cross-functional team to own backend services, authorization engines, and data models. You’ll partner closely with product engineers, compliance and application security teams, forward deployed engineers, and mission users to build identity and access management capabilities that are intuitive, scalable, and deeply integrated into the product experience. This is a high-impact opportunity to shape how Vannevar approaches identity and permissions, build reusable platform capabilities, and enable new customer workflows across our products.

What you’ll do

• Drive implementation, adoption, and ongoing evolution of core platform permission infrastructure and shared services.
• Lead mission-critical projects to build and scale foundational platform auth capabilities.
• Partner closely with engineers across the organization to develop and standardize security platform solutions that address cross-product challenges.
• Collaborate with compliance and Mission stakeholders to define and enforce standards for access control, data protection, and system integrity.
• Influence architecture, technology selection, and engineering standards across the company.
• Grow your engineering skills by solving complex, high-impact problems in security platform and infrastructure systems.

What we’re looking for

• You have 5+ years of backend development experience, including hands on experience building identity and access management systems that other product teams rely on.
• You have strong system design skills and can make thoughtful tradeoffs among performance, reliability, scalability, and cost.
• You have led cross-team technical initiatives spanning multiple systems and driven adoption through influence.
• You bring a security-first mindset and are comfortable operating with high discipline in sensitive environments.
• You communicate complex technical concepts clearly to a broad audience, including engineers, cross-functional partners, and end users.
• U.S. Person status is required, as this role requires access to U.S.-only data systems.

What we offer

The salary range for this position is $150,000 - $215,000 + equity. Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.

We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

• Remote friendly with WeWork access
• Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends
• Salary top-up during military reserve duty
• Fully paid parental leave
• Child and pet care reimbursement during travel

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you!

IMPORTANT NOTICEWe are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.