Senior Distributed Systems Engineer - Security

About eBay and the Role

At eBay, we are not just a leading global e-commerce platform; we are transforming how the world shops and sells. Our expansive platform facilitates millions of buyers and sellers across over 190 international markets. We prioritize customer-centricity, authenticity, welcome innovative ideas, and encourage every individual to bring their authentic selves to the workplace daily. Together, we sustain the future not only for our users and company but also for the planet.

Join our team of innovative and passionate thinkers and help us foster economic opportunities by connecting people and building communities.

Team and Position Overview

The Cloud Security Engineering team at eBay is responsible for creating advanced identity and access platforms that safeguard one of the largest commerce ecosystems globally. Our distributed systems support millions of users, services, and transactions daily and are critical to maintaining the trust, security, and reliability of eBay.

As a Distributed Systems Engineer, you will design and implement cloud-scale directory services, authorization frameworks, and policy engines that provide secure, real-time access control for both human and non-human entities. A key aspect of this role is leveraging an AI-first engineering approach to accelerate development, enhance system reliability, automate routine tasks, and enable intelligent operational decisions.

Primary Responsibilities

• Architect and develop cloud-scale directory services managing identities, entitlements, and relationships across the global eBay platform.
• Create high-performance policy engines and low-latency authorization services supporting fine-grained access controls such as RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC for millions of real-time queries.
• Develop secure, scalable, and easily integrable APIs and microservices leveraging resilient architecture.
• Utilize AI-assisted engineering tools throughout the software lifecycle to improve design, implementation, testing, debugging, documentation, and operational efficiency.
• Embed AI-driven functionality into identity and authorization platforms to enhance policy intelligence, detect anomalies, gain operational insights, and support adaptive access management.
• Build highly observable services with automated deployment, monitoring, and incident response, employing modern cloud-native engineering techniques.
• Collaborate with Identity, Platform, Security, and Infrastructure teams to define and evolve next-gen identity architectures and continuously strengthen eBay’s security stance.
• Identify and implement automation opportunities to improve engineering workflows, boost developer productivity, and simplify operations through responsible AI adoption.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum of 5 years of professional experience in developing large-scale backend or distributed systems focusing on scalability, consistency, replication, partitioning, and fault tolerance.
• Proficient in building cloud-native services using Java, Go, or similar programming languages, including experience with scalable APIs and microservices.
• Experience working with SQL, NoSQL, or graph databases, especially in modeling identity, entitlements, or relationship data.
• Strong knowledge of authorization models like RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC, and familiarity with policy engines such as OPA and Cedar, as well as identity and access management (IAM), LDAP, or other modern identity platforms.
• Practical experience leveraging AI-powered software engineering tools to enhance development, testing, code quality, debugging, documentation, and operational excellence.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, cloud-native architectures, service meshes, and cutting-edge observability solutions.
• A growth-oriented mindset with enthusiasm for continuous learning, automation, and the responsible implementation of emerging AI technologies to positively impact engineering outcomes.

Desired Characteristics

We seek engineers who embrace AI as a key instrument in contemporary software engineering — not substituting expertise but amplifying their impact. You are committed to continual learning, automating mundane tasks, refining engineering workflows, and employing AI to create secure, reliable, and scalable software faster without compromising quality, security, or operational standards.

Additional Information

eBay is an equal opportunity employer that considers qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability status, or other legally protected categories. We are committed to accessibility and invite candidates requiring accommodations to reach out so we can support them promptly.

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