Principal Software Engineer, Identity and Engagement Platform

Principal Software Engineer, Identity & Engagement

Dropbox is a Virtual First company. For this role, we are hiring in Zones 2 and 3. Please refer to our Compensation section below to see what neighborhoods fall under each Zone.

Role Description

Dropbox is hiring a Principal Software Engineer, Identity & Engagement to define and build the next-generation identity platform powering Dropbox's product ecosystem.

This platform sits at the center of every Dropbox experience, from user onboarding and collaboration to enterprise integrations and AI-powered workflows. As Dropbox evolves into an AI-native SaaS platform, identity is no longer just about users logging in. It is about securely enabling people, applications, and AI agents to act, collaborate, and automate work on their behalf.

In this role, you will set the technical vision and lead the architectural evolution of Dropbox's identity systems, spanning authentication, authorization, account lifecycle, and delegated access. You will partner across Product, Security, Infrastructure, and AI teams to build systems that are secure, scalable, and intuitive, while enabling new classes of intelligent, agent-driven experiences.

This is a high-impact, company-level role shaping how trust, access, and control are modeled across Dropbox.

Responsibilities

• Technical leadership and architecture: Define and drive the technical roadmap for identity and engagement platform services, including APIs, service boundaries, data models, and reliability goals.
• Modernization and platform evolution: Lead multi-quarter modernization efforts (e.g., reducing legacy dependencies, improving scalability, simplifying integrations) with a focus on cohesion, observability, and operational excellence.
• Identity and access systems: Design and improve authentication, authorization, account integrity, and identity lifecycle services with strong security and privacy posture.
• Engagement and insights foundations: Build and evolve the systems that power engagement signals, experimentation hooks, telemetry/analytics pipelines, and usage insights to support product iteration and growth.
• Developer velocity and platform enablement: Create reusable platform primitives, reference architectures, and best practices that make it easier for product teams to build safely and quickly.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with Product, Design, Security, Infrastructure, and AI/ML teams to align technical decisions with customer outcomes and organizational priorities.
• Execution and quality: Own delivery of complex initiatives end-to-end—breaking down ambiguous problems, driving alignment, and ensuring high-quality implementation, testing, rollout, and oncall readiness.
• Mentorship and influence: Mentor senior engineers, review critical designs, elevate engineering standards, and influence technical direction across teams beyond your immediate scope.

Requirements

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and operating large-scale backend or platform systems.
• Proven ability to lead architecture for distributed systems with high reliability, performance, and security requirements.
• Strong expertise in at least two of the following areas: identity/authn/authz, service API design, analytics/telemetry infrastructure, search/retrieval foundations, experimentation platforms, or engagement systems.
• Track record of driving modernization efforts in complex environments (e.g., migrating legacy systems, improving data quality and observability, simplifying architecture).
• Excellent technical judgment and ability to balance speed, stability, and long-term maintainability.
• Strong communication skills: able to write clear design docs, align stakeholders, and lead technical decision-making across teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with cloud-scale identity platforms (SSO, session management, risk signals, account security, privacy controls).
• Familiarity with AI enablement infrastructure, especially data pipelines, engagement signals, retrieval/search systems, and feedback loops.
• Experience building or operating multi-tenant SaaS platforms with strong compliance and security requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to influence org-wide standards and technical strategy (beyond a single team), including mentorship of other tech leads and principals.

Compensation

US Zone 1

$284,800—$385,200 USD

US Zone 2

$256,300—$346,700 USD

US Zone 3

$227,800—$308,200 USD

The range(s) listed above is the expected annual salary/OTE (On-Target Earnings) for this role, subject to change. Please note, OTE are for sales roles only. Salary/OTE is just one component of Dropbox's total rewards package. All regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or a sales incentive (target included in OTE) as well as stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). Dropbox takes a number of factors into account when determining individual starting pay, including job and level they are hired into, location/metropolitan area, skillset, and peer compensation. We target most new hire offers between the minimum up to the middle of the range. Dropbox uses the zip code of an employee's remote work location to determine which metropolitan pay range we use. Current US Zone locations are as follows:

• US Zone 1: San Francisco metro, New York City metro, or Seattle metro
• US Zone 2: California (outside SF metro), Colorado, Connecticut (outside NYC metro), Delaware, Illinois (Chicago metro), Indiana (Chicago metro), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Chicago metro), New Hampshire, New Jersey (outside NYC metro), New York (outside NYC metro), Oregon, Pennsylvania (D.C. metro), Pennsylvania (outside NYC metro), Texas (Austin metro) Virginia (DC metro), Washington (outside Seattle metro), Washington DC metro, West Virginia (DC metro), Wisconsin (Chicago metro)
• US Zone 3: All other US locations

Check Your Zone

Read more about our Benefits.

Company Description

Dropbox isn't just a workplace—it's a living lab for designing a more enlightened way of working. We're a global community of bold visionaries and resourceful doers shaping the future of Dropbox and, in turn, the future of work. Our Virtual First model combines the autonomy of a distributed workplace with the power of human connection, creating space for meaningful work and lasting relationships. With a startup mindset and enterprise-level opportunities, we expect Dropbox employees to think critically, stay curious, and use modern tools, including AI, to improve how work gets done. Here, you can be who you are and grow into who you're meant to be. You own your impact, helping make work more intuitive, joyful, and human for yourself and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. If you're ready to push boundaries and challenge yourself, Dropbox is ready for you.

Team Description

The Dropbox Engineering Team develops the technology, platforms, and products that create more enlightened ways of working for hundreds of millions of people. Customers rely on Dropbox to manage, share, and collaborate on content seamlessly—our engineering makes that easier and more intuitive than ever before. Our platform features a robust systems software layer that stores and processes exabytes of data, and a suite of growing services that enhance core products like our sharing and sync engine. We're also driving innovation with new offerings such as Dash, our AI-powered knowledge management engine. Our infrastructure spans high-performance servers and cutting-edge components across multiple data centers worldwide, ensuring reliability, speed, and scalability at a global scale. We think like a startup but build for an enterprise, exploring new possibilities that transform how people work. If you're excited about turning complex technical challenges into intuitive solutions at scale, join our Engineering team.

Virtual First

Dropbox's Virtual First way of working is designed to help people do their best work with flexibility, autonomy, and connection. Day to day, teams work remotely with nonlinear schedules and core collaboration hours that support deep focus and individual working styles. We prioritize asynchronous communication to improve clarity, respect deep work time, and reduce unnecessary meetings. While remote work is the primary experience for our employees, we also prioritize intentional, in-person connection. We bring teams together through regular team gatherings, on-demand workspaces, and Dropbox Neighborhood events in order to strengthen team cohesion, foster creativity, and enhance momentum. Virtual First is built to provide the same access to opportunity, growth, and impact for everyone, regardless of location.

This role requires travel to offsites and various other team gatherings (approximately 5-10% of the year or 2-3 days per quarter). We provide advance notice when possible and encourage candidates to discuss