Backend Engineer Java Jobs in Madison, WI (NOW HIRING)

Engineering Manager, Authentication (Core Services)

Join us at Zendesk, where we're on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. We're accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI, automation, and intelligent customer experiences, because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.

We're seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead the Authentication team within Core Services Engineering. In this role you'll own delivery for authentication security capabilities used across Zendesk products and services - including SSO, MFA, login flows, Admin Center security settings, OAuth/API tokens, session management, and abuse prevention. You'll ensure these systems are secure, reliable, and scalable while enabling great customer experiences.

You will play a vital role in growing Zendesk's access management platform: coordinating a distributed team across US and Europe, partnering with Product, Security, Architecture, Legal, and leadership, and influencing cross-org architecture, risk posture, and operational excellence for authentication and abuse mitigation. This is a high visibility role with opportunity for growth.

What you'll be doing

• Lead and operationally manage the Authentication organization responsible for core authentication and access management services, including login systems, single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication, OAuth tokens, administrative security settings, and abuse mitigation features.

• Define and execute the team roadmap and priorities to reduce risk, improve reliability and latency, and enhance customer authentication experience.

• Drive operational excellence: establish and refine SLAs/SLOs, observability, automated testing, incident response, and postmortems to reduce MTTR and improve service health.

• Partner with Product, Security, Architecture, and Legal to translate requirements into secure, testable designs and threat models; influence cross-org auth strategy and policy.

• Coach and grow engineering talent (individual contributors and tech leads); hire and retain engineers aligned to team needs; foster an inclusive, collaborative culture.

• Make technical tradeoffs and participate in architecture decisions for distributed access management systems, capacity planning, and scaling throughput.

• Coordinate resource planning and delivery across time zones to meet quarterly and long-term goals.

What you bring to the role

Required

• 8+ years software engineering experience and 2+ years managing engineering teams.

• Experience building and operating high-scale services and APIs in production environments.

• Familiarity with identity and access management industry standards: SSO (SAML, OIDC), OAuth2, MFA, session/token management, account lifecycle, abuse/fraud mitigation patterns.

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal - you can represent your organization's work to senior leadership and communicate trade-offs clearly.

Preferred

• Prior experience operating and scaling identity and access management systems in a production environment

• Data-driven decision maker: you are adept at using data to prioritize work and influence stakeholders.

• Familiarity with backend languages/platforms commonly used for identity services (e.g., Go, Java/ Kotlin, Node) and cloud providers (AWS/GCP).

• Experience with privacy and compliance frameworks relevant to authentication (SOC2, ISO, GDPR).

• Track record of completing complex zero-downtime systems migrations in a production environment.

AI Literacy Requirement

• Candidates must be comfortable using AI-powered tools to increase engineering productivity (e.g., code assistance, test generation, incident analysis), understand risks and limitations of AI in security contexts, and be able to lead responsible, risk-aware adoption of Agentic AI for authentication use cases.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we're proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.