Staff Software Engineer, Core GRC

Drata is building the trust layer between great companies - automating compliance, managing risk, and helping organizations prove trust continuously as they scale. We're Dratanauts: a global crew of 600+ professionals united by a culture that rewards integrity, ownership, and raising the bar, no matter where in the world we're working from.
Why Join the Drata Team?
At Drata, you're not maintaining legacy compliance software - you're building the agentic AI platform defining what trust looks like for the next generation of companies. Here's what makes the work itself worth showing up for:

• Problems without a playbook: You'll work at the edge of AI and security, building agentic governance, continuous compliance, and real-time trust verification to solve problems that don't have an established answer yet. You're writing it as you go.

• Real ownership, not just process: Our values center on owning outcomes and raising the bar, not checking boxes. You're expected to have opinions and back them.

• A seat at the table: Your perspective is unique and valued. Open debate and diverse viewpoints are built into how decisions actually get made here, at every level.

• Growth at rocketship speed: Drata is scaling fast, which means scope grows fast too. High performers get more ownership, visibility, and experience.

• A crew, not just coworkers: Dratanauts consistently describe a "come as you are" culture with sharp, curious people—the kind of team that makes hard problems genuinely fun to solve. See what they say here and follow us on LinkedIn for company news, employee stories, and career updates.

Job Summary:

The Staff Software Engineer serves as a technical leader across multiple small teams. They design and build scalable systems, guide architectural decisions, and tackle complex challenges that span codebases and domains. They work closely with Product and Engineering leadership to shape the technical roadmap, ensure systems are reliable and secure, and drive key cross-team initiatives from idea to implementation. The role balances deep technical work, collaborative problem-solving, and mentoring in a distributed environment.

What you’ll do:

• Partner with Product to shape roadmap requirements and recommend the right technologies and design patterns.

• Review architecture and code for your team’s projects to ensure quality, scalability, and security—while empowering the team to own implementation and delivery.

• Troubleshoot performance and scalability issues escalated from your teams. Identify root causes, guide solutions, and see them through to resolution.

• Own and deliver cross-team projects that are difficult to tackle at the team level—such as introducing new frameworks, improving the developer experience, or migrating shared functionality.

• Mentor engineers across teams through guilds, office hours, and informal coaching.

What you’ll bring:

• 10+ years of experience as a software engineer, with a strong foundation in building and maintaining production systems.

• 3+ years of experience working with Node.js or React in production environments.

• 1+ years of experience with NestJS (preferred).

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.

• Strong experience with authentication & authorization protocols like OAuth, SCIM, OIDC, and RBAC systems

• In depth knowledge of authentication and authorization systems from large third party providers

Strong proficiency with:

• JavaScript/TypeScript and object-oriented programming

• Building and consuming RESTful web services

• Networking protocols and relational databases

• Writing unit, integration, and end-to-end tests

• Using logging and telemetry tools to monitor and debug production systems

• Working with Git and modern CI/CD practices

• At least one major cloud platform (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure) or infrastructure as code tools (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi)

Nice to have experience with:

• AI-assisted development tools

• TypeORM, Jest, Redis, and ElasticSearch

You’ve had success in roles where you:

• Successfully completed the migration of a large company to a complex, third-party authentication system.

• Led groups of engineers through feature delivery, from scoping and ticket creation to implementation and release

• Owned major products or features, balancing technical tradeoffs like quality vs. speed or team autonomy vs. alignment

• Built and scaled real-world web applications

• Worked in fast-paced environments, such as startups or growth-stage companies

• Communicated architectural decisions clearly across teams and kept stakeholders informed through status updates

• Balanced individual contributor work with time spent mentoring or unblocking teammates

• Adopted new technologies and introduced them thoughtfully into a codebase

• Used product development methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, or Lean

How we support you:
At Drata, our people are our strongest advantage—and we prove it with support that exceeds industry standards. Our total rewards package is designed to power your well-being, accelerate your growth, and keep your work-life balance thriving.

Explore how we invest in your Life at Drata.

• Shared Success: We provide stock equity to ensure that as the company grows, you share directly in that success. Equity gives every employee a sense of ownership and the opportunity to celebrate our wins together—because your contributions don’t just support our progress; they help drive our collective success.

• Health & Wellness: Up to 100% employer-paid premiums for medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their dependents, along with comprehensive wellness benefits and healthcare concierge services designed to support your needs beyond traditional insurance.

• Financial Well-being: A comprehensive suite of financial benefits, including a 401(k) plan, company-paid life and disability insurance, tax-advantaged spending accounts, and a range of discounted voluntary offerings to help you customize and strengthen your overall financial position.

• Family Support: We want to support you in life's most important moments, so we offer a paid Parental Leave policy, after six months of employment. Employees also receive access to Kindbody fertility and family-building benefits and dedicated leave specialists who help guide you through the entire process.

• Growth & Development: Generous annual stipends for both professional and personal development, empowering you to invest in your continued growth. You’ll also have access to a wide range of internal learning opportunities, ensuring you can build new skills, deepen your expertise, and advance your career with confidence.

• Time Off & Flexibility: We believe that to do your best work, you should get the time you need for rest, rejuvenation and recovery. Drata offers a flexible vacation policy, paid holidays, and other perks to recharge.

The expected base salary range for this role is between $200,700 - $271,500 and is listed to provide transparency. Actual base pay will vary based on multiple factors — market location, job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and overall alignment to the role.

Candidates shouldn't expect automatic placement at any particular point within the range. Offer amounts are determined by the qualifications each candidate brings to the position. Total compensation may also include equity designed to provide meaningful ownership in the company, as well as health and wellbeing benefits.