Launch Recruitment are currently partnering with a leading financial services organization to identify a Principal Engineer - Machine Identity to join a high-performing security engineering team. This team is responsible for enabling secure service-to-service authentication at enterprise scale. They design and build machine identity solutions, including X.509 certificate patterns and authentication integration layers, ensuring that services, APIs, and workloads can authenticate securely without human intervention. Operating across cloud platforms, API gateways, and identity layers, the team delivers a unified, zero-trust architecture, integrating workload identity with broader IAM ecosystems. The Role This is a senior engineering position with a strong focus on both architecture and delivery (approximately 60% hands-on engineering and 40% stakeholder engagement). You will design and build machine identity solutions, solving complex authentication challenges across distributed systems. This includes integrating workload identity with human IAM, cloud platforms, API gateways, and service meshes, as well as designing scalable X.509 certificate patterns. You'll take ideas from concept through to working prototypes and production-ready solutions, challenging legacy approaches and applying modern cryptographic principles to deliver secure, scalable authentication systems. Alongside hands-on engineering, you will engage with key stakeholders to shape strategy and influence technical direction. Key Requirements Strong experience designing and building security or identity solutions at enterprise scale Proven ability to write production-quality code (e.g. Python, Go or similar) and deliver working systems Experience architecting authentication across multiple layers (IAM, OAuth/OIDC, cloud identity, API gateways), with a focus on engineering rather than specific tools Deep understanding of machine identity concepts, including certificates vs tokens and federation design Hands-on experience debugging and operating distributed authentication systems Solid grounding in PKI, X.509, JWTs, and cryptographic principles Ability to engage effectively with stakeholders while maintaining a strong delivery focus Experience with workload identity platforms, service mesh or API gateway authentication, or contributions to identity/zero-trust projects will be highly regarded. This is an exciting permanent opportunity to join a high-performing Cyber team, working across Identity Engineering. If you are interested in hearing more about this role, please do reach out to Sophie Garrison - Practice Lead, Cyber Security - sgarrison@launchrecruitment.com.au