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SpruceSP

Principal Forward Deployed Engineer

Spruce is building a future where users control their identity and data across all digital interactions. We believe in endowing individuals with control over privacy through open-source software that makes user-controlled interactions possible.

Spruce

Employee count: 11-50

United States only
At SpruceID, we are reimagining trusted interactions by creating the world’s best software for digital identity. We are a team of engineers building world-class open source software that implements open global standards. We believe success is not only about great technology, but also about empowering people to have secure, private, and reliable experiences with their governments.
As a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer, you will operate at the intersection of technical leadership and strategic delivery. You will lead high-impact engagements with state governments and public sector partners, guiding both the architecture and the adoption strategy for digital identity solutions. You’ll work closely with engineering teams, delivery managers, and executives, both within SpruceID and on the customer side, to ensure that deployments not only succeed technically, but also achieve lasting policy and operational outcomes.
This role is hands-on and customer-facing. You’ll write and review code, architect systems, and set engineering best practices, while also shaping roadmaps, influencing standards, and representing SpruceID in strategic conversations.
This job is fully remote within the US, but we prefer candidates in states where we do business including CA, UT, and CO.

What You'll Do

  • Define technical strategy and architecture for public sector deployments, ensuring both technical excellence and alignment with policy and operational needs
  • Act as the senior technical representative in executive-level customer meetings, bridging the gap between technical details and business or policy outcomes
  • Lead multiple end-to-end multi-year projects from rapid prototyping to development to operations and maintenance
  • Architect and build backend systems, full-stack web applications, and mobile solutions with a focus on security, privacy, and accessibility
  • Translate government requirements into robust, standards-based solutions that integrate with both modern and legacy systems
  • Mentor and guide forward deployed engineers and delivery teams, setting standards for high-quality engineering and customer collaboration
  • Identify and drive efficiencies across projects, ensuring knowledge and tooling are shared across teams
  • Collaborate with platform teams to feed customer insights into SpruceID’s roadmap and contributions to global identity standards

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of experience designing, building, and delivering production-grade software in statically typed languages (Rust, Go, Java, C#)
  • Proven ability to lead large-scale engineering efforts that span multiple teams and organizations
  • Strong expertise across the software development stack, including infrastructure, devops, architecture, frontend, and mobile
  • Demonstrated experience working with public sector or highly regulated industries, including direct customer engagement at both executive and technical levels
  • Excellent leadership, communication, and consulting skills with the ability to influence strategy as well as execution
  • Based in the US and willing to travel as needed to support state government partners

Bonus Qualifications

  • Experience leading digital transformation or modernization efforts in the public sector
  • Familiarity with procurement, compliance, and governance considerations in state government projects
  • Deep knowledge of computer security, cryptography, and user data privacy practices
At SpruceID, we value diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or veteran status.

About the job

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Posted on

Job type

Full Time

Experience level

Senior
Manager

Location requirements

Hiring timezones

United States +/- 0 hours

About Spruce

Learn more about Spruce and their company culture.

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We believe users should be able to control their identity and data across all digital interactions.

Founders Wayne Chang and Gregory Rocco met while working at ConsenSys in Brooklyn, New York. They realized that the best way to ensure a user-centric future was to build the core infrastructure that lets users control their data across the web. Enter Spruce in early 2020. As implementers and architects of emerging global identity standards such as W3C Verifiable Credentials, Sign-In with Ethereum, and more, we recognize the importance of aligning the ecosystem and providing core open-source building blocks to make this all possible.

We Believe in

  • Enabling a world where users can control their data across the web.

  • Giving people security and privacy through private-by-default architectures.

  • Supporting builders with open-source software for user-controlled interactions.

Our Investors

We're proud to be backed by a world-class team of investors, including top founders, leaders, and institutions in the industry.

Grow With Us

We're a team of user control maximalists, and while we’re not zealots of any particular technology, we want to ensure that technology is never the limiting factor for a user-controlled future. We believe that the world is evolving toward one based on cryptography, networks, and digital economies that must all put user at the center.

If this resonates with you, check out our open roles.

Employee benefits

Learn about the employee benefits and perks provided at Spruce.

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Healthcare benefits

Quality group health insurance coverage.

Company retreats

We have team gatherings around the world.

Flexible working hours

We accommodate all kinds of lifestyles and life stages. Come work on your terms.

Unlimited PTO

Take as much time off as you want as long as it doesn't interfere with your ability to do your work.

View Spruce's employee benefits
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Spruce

Company size

11-50 employees

Founded in

2020

Chief executive officer

Wayne Chang

View company profile

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Spruce hiring Principal Forward Deployed Engineer • Remote (Work from Home) | Himalayas