Staff Software Engineer - Authentication

Job description

## **About Taskrabbit:** Taskrabbit is a marketplace platform that conveniently connects people with Taskers to handle everyday home to-do’s, such as furniture assembly, handyman work, moving help, and much more. At Taskrabbit, we want to transform lives one task at a time. As a company we celebrate innovation, inclusion and hard work. Our culture is collaborative, pragmatic, and fast-paced. We’re looking for talented, entrepreneurially minded and data-driven people who also have a passion for helping people do what they love. Together with IKEA, we’re creating more opportunities for people to earn a consistent, meaningful income on their own terms by building lasting relationships with clients in communities around the world. Taskrabbit is a hybrid company with employees distributed across the US and EU and a Built In — Best Places to Work (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025) continually ranked across multiple national and regional categories. Join us at Taskrabbit, where your work will be meaningful, your ideas valued, and your potential unleashed! **Prior to applying please note:** - **This role is hybrid, requiring 2 days in office at our San Francisco hub every Tuesday & Wednesday (located at 130 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA).** ## About the Role: The Core Services team is focused on building out shared capabilities and services that impact all other teams at Taskrabbit, and those services are used on almost every portion of our platform. We serve as the foundation that enables our engineering organization to stay on track, move faster, and build scalable, high-impact features. In this role, you will help lead the design and evolution of the shared platform capabilities that power our marketplace, such as authentication and identity, event-driven systems, and API infrastructure. As a Staff Engineer, you will help lead a team that designs, builds, evolves, and maintains these foundational systems. Your technical decisions will have a direct and highly visible impact on engineering productivity, product velocity, and the overall experience of our marketplace! Join us in transforming lives, one task at a time. ## What You'll Work On: - Lead the architecture, integration, and adoption of shared platform capabilities (e.g., authentication and identity, event streaming, API infrastructure) across teams - Design, build, and maintain robust, high-performance TypeScript-based APIs and foundational services - Drive the design and adoption of event-based architectures that enable reliable, loosely coupled communication between services - Own and evolve our authentication and authorization approach, including integration with third-party identity platforms and partner integrations - Work closely with Ruby on Rails backend services and integrate shared capabilities into existing application infrastructure - Propose and drive improvements to platform performance, reliability, security, and developer experience - Guide and mentor other engineers on best practices for API design, system design, and scalable architecture - Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to define a unified technical strategy for shared services across Taskrabbit ## Your core skills: - 8+ years of experience developing modern APIs and distributed services - Hands-on experience with authentication and identity platforms (e.g., Auth0, Okta, Cognito, or similar), including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SSO - Experience designing and operating event-based architectures (e.g., Kafka, SNS/SQS, EventBridge, or similar) - Experience building and maintaining robust TypeScript-based APIs and services - Exceptionally strong technical design and architecture skills with a focus on scalable shared capabilities - Professional experience with AI-led agentic software development (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc.) - Experience with modern software development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and containerized environments - Passion for mentoring engineers and elevating team capabilities - Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical subjects clearly - Proven track record of breaking down complex platform initiatives into manageable, high-impact iterations ## Nice-to-have skills: - Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS), infrastructure as code, and container orchestration (Kubernetes) - Comfortable with relational and key-value datastores (e.g., MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch) - Experience with Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) design patterns - Experience with API gateways, rate limiting, and securing service-to-service communication - Professional experience with Ruby on Rails, including working within and extending large, existing Rails applications ## **Compensation & Benefits:** At Taskrabbit, our approach to compensation is designed to be competitive, transparent, and equitable. Total compensation consists of base pay + bonus + benefits + perks. The base pay range for this position is $150,000 - $200,000. This range is representative of base pay only, and does not include any other total cash compensation amounts, such as company bonus or benefits. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed above and will be determined by factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, qualifications, geography, and level. ## **You’ll love working here because:** - **Taskrabbit is a Hybrid Company.** We value flexibility and choice but also stay committed to regular in-person connection. - **The People.** You will be surrounded by some of the most talented, supportive, smart, and kind leaders and teams -- people you can be proud to work with! - **The Diverse Culture.** We believe that we make better decisions when our workforce reflects the diversity of the communities in which we operate. Women make up half of our leadership team and our diversity representation is above that of the tech industry average. - **The Perks.** Taskrabbit offers our employees with employer-paid health insurance and a 401k match with immediate vesting for our US based employees. We offer all of our global employees generous and flexible time off with 2 company-wide closure weeks, Taskrabbit product stipends, wellness + productivity + education stipends, IKEA discounts, reproductive health support, and more. **Benefits vary by country of employment.** ## **Taskrabbit’s commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:** An Active Commitment to Equity within our Company and Platform. We are an inclusive community where all who share our mission and values belong. Our diverse team represents the communities we serve, breaking down systemic barriers, and transforming lives- one action at a time. Taskrabbit is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, military/veteran status, or disability status. Taskrabbit is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. Taskrabbit will consider for employment all qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. **AI-Assisted Prescreening Notice [US Based Candidates Only]**: As part of our hiring process, we may use artificial intelligence tools to assist with the initial prescreening of applications and responses. This tool does not make hiring decisions — every application and response is reviewed by a member of our recruiting team to determine fit for the role. If you would prefer not to have your application processed using this tool, you may opt out by selecting 'opt out' in the application form or by emailing [talentacquisition@taskrabbit.com](mailto:careers@taskrabbit.com), and your application will be reviewed manually with no impact on your candidacy.