Senior Software Engineer IAM

Introduction

A career in IBM Software means you'll be part of a team that transforms our customers' challenges into solutions.

Seeking new possibilities and always staying curious, we are a team dedicated to creating the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions for our customers. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our IBMers, so the door is always open for those who want to grow their career.

IBM Intelligent Automation, powered by AI, addresses challenges by helping People become more productive, Businesses more scalable, and Systems more resilient. We combine human skills with automation and AI to enhance team productivity and improve decision making. We help companies digitize and intelligently automate and connect their business processes and systems end-to-end to improve business outcomes at scale. We assure that all of the applications and systems businesses rely on are always on and perform cost effectively to deliver the best possible user experience.

IBM's product and technology landscape includes Research, Software, and Infrastructure. Entering this domain positions you at the heart of IBM, where growth and innovation thrive.

Your role and responsibilities

Keycloak is the leading open source Identity and Access management platform, and part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It provides a broad range of capabilities to secure applications in a cloud-native environment, such as single sign-on (SSO), identity brokering and user federation.

The Keycloak Core Clients team is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to lead advancements in authentication protocols and security capabilities. In this role, you'll enhance support for standards like OAuth2, OIDC, and SAML; improve features such as passwordless login, risk-based, and step-up authentication; and ensure the platform adapts to emerging security requirements. Your contributions will help strengthen Keycloak's standing in the IAM ecosystem, including participation in industry specification working groups to influence and implement the future of identity standards.

• Advance IAM and Open Standards: Design and implement authentication and authorization features in Keycloak, ensuring compliance with standards such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, FIDO2/WebAuthn, Passkeys, and mutual TLS (mTLS). Contribute actively to community working groups and industry specification efforts.
• Enhance Cloud-Native Architecture: Collaborate on maintaining and evolving Keycloak's core codebase with a focus on scalability, performance, and cloud-native deployment needs.
• Security Compliance and Integration: Strengthen Keycloak's alignment with industry security standards and improve interoperability across diverse application environments.
• Support and Grow the Open Source Community: Promote best practices, refine security documentation, and improve onboarding processes while contributing to IAM-focused Special Interest Groups (SIGs).
• Team Collaboration and Delivery: Engage in daily team operations including bug triage, test suite maintenance, sprint planning, customer support, and roadmap development.

Ensure Product Quality and Reliability: Design and implement automated tests and testing frameworks to validate functionality, scalability, and usability across diverse deployment scenarios. Identify and document bugs, contribute to test suite maintenance, and drive continuous improvement in quality assurance practices.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Minimum of 5 years of extensive Java development experience with strong proficiency in Jakarta EE.
• Solid hands-on experience with token-based security protocols such as OAuth2 and OpenID Connect.
• Strong foundational knowledge of cloud application development and security principles.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and collaborate effectively in team environments.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Familiarity with passwordless authentication solutions (e.g., Passkeys, WebAuthn, FIDO2).
• Understanding of Zero Trust architecture and Confidential Computing principles.
• Experience with mTLS authentication and mutual certificate-based security models.
• Practical knowledge of Quarkus and reactive programming paradigms.
• Previous contributions to open-source IAM, security, or cloud-native projects.
• Proficient in Jenkins, CI/CD workflows, and pipeline development for automated testing and deployment
• Familiarity with JavaScript and ReactJS
• Quick learner with a proactive approach to troubleshooting and resolving technical challenges

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI-to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

For additional information about location requirements, please discuss with the recruiter following submission of your application.

Client-provided location(s): Dublin, Ireland

Job ID: IBM-56881

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2025-09-09T18:52:29