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Vannevar is a defense technology company building AI to deter our adversaries. In the 21st century, conflict moves at algorithmic speed and foresight equals firepower. Our agentic AI is purpose-built to compete with China—from cross-Strait conflict to gray zone coercion. Trained on the most mission-relevant datasets in defense, our technology models adversary behavior, simulates campaigns, and recommends the best course of action to decision makers. Our AI systems are some of the most trusted in the industry and actively used on the front lines of the Indo-Pacific to keep the peace and save lives.
Exceptional technology starts with exceptional people. Vannevar is a small agile team combining world-class engineers with veteran strategists who bring deep expertise in defense and tradecraft. We’re building a company defined by mission impact, user empathy, and disciplined growth. In just three years, we grew from $3M to $80M in ARR, achieved early profitability, and reached unicorn status—proving that disruption doesn’t require an ego, and staying power doesn’t mean standing still.
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 and own work across the stack—from frontend permission-management interfaces to backend services, authorization engines, and data models. You’ll partner closely with product engineers, designers, compliance and application security teams, forward deployed engineers, and mission users to build security 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
- Build and scale Vannevar’s centralized authentication and authorization platform, including tenant isolation across customer environments—from development through classified deployments.
- Own the internal self-service platform for user, group, and permission management; partner with Design to deliver intuitive administrative experiences for developers and mission teams.
- Build tooling and visualizations that help developers, administrators, and mission users understand and validate access permissions.
- Own and evolve Vannevar’s platform management interfaces, including the feature flag system, to support new products and customer needs.
- Partner with product engineering teams to build shared authorization and resource-sharing capabilities across the platform.
- Shape the long-term roadmap for the Security Platform team by driving scalable platform capabilities and improving the developer experience.
What we’re looking for
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of designing, building, and operating scalable backend systems, and delivering full-stack features from conception through production.
- Strong backend expertise, including proficiency in one or more modern backend languages (e.g., Python, Java), experience with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL), distributed systems, and API design.
- Comfortable owning end-to-end development, including frontend work (e.g., React/TypeScript/Node.js) when needed, with a focus on delivering polished, customer-facing experiences rather than specializing exclusively in backend infrastructure.
- Strong product intuition, with the ability to make pragmatic technical decisions, balance user needs with engineering tradeoffs, and thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
- Experience with identity and authentication concepts and platforms, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SAML, JWTs, session management, RBAC/ABAC, SSO, Keycloak, OpenFGA, or other authentication and authorization systems.
- Excellent cross-functional collaboration and communication skills, with experience partnering closely with product, design, security, and infrastructure teams, driving technical direction, and aligning stakeholders through ambiguity.
- Nice to have
- Active Security clearance or ability to obtain one and desire to travel to visit users, collect feedback, and debug issues
- Prior experience working in a user-facing product role
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.
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Remote friendly with WeWork access
- Unlimited PTO, shared downtime during the federal holiday calendar, and company-wide off time at the end of each year
- 401(k) match
- Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends
- Salary top-up during military reserve duty
- Fully paid parental leave
- Child and pet care reimbursement during travel
We 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.
Vannevar San Francisco, California, USA Office
600 California Ave, San Francisco, California, United States, 94130 1705
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