[Hiring] Senior Standards Engineer @Identity Digital

Role Description

Known is building the accountability infrastructure for autonomous AI. As AI agents increasingly operate across organizations, platforms, and jurisdictions, Known is advancing DNSid as an open, neutral DNS-based identity standard designed to make accountability interoperable at Internet scale.

This is a technical role. The person in this seat needs to walk in as a peer, not a guest. You can hold your own in a working group session, argue a position on a mailing list, and come back with an accurate read of what actually happened in the room.

Our specifications are authored by our CTO, and he cannot be everywhere. This role is being created so that our technical position is represented consistently in the rooms he cannot attend. You will start as his delegate. Within two years, the goal is that you are authoring drafts of your own.

This is a growth seat. We are hiring for trajectory, not for a finished résumé.

This role reports to CTO, Known.

What You'll Do

• Internet standards: Represent our technical position in working groups our CTO cannot attend.
• Track the drafts adjacent to ours, follow the list traffic, and flag what matters before it becomes a problem.
• Specification work: Revise our drafts, respond to review comments, and build the supporting material that gets a draft through a process rather than stalled in one.
• Implementation and proof: Build the reference implementations, interop tests, and demos that make a specification credible.
• Relationships: Build durable technical credibility with the individuals who shape these communities.
• Growth into authorship: Take the pen on secondary drafts as you earn standing in the community.
• Actively model and promote Identity Digital’s core values through day-to-day interactions, behaviors, and decision-making.
• Other duties as assigned.

What Success Looks Like

• Within six months, you are a recognized second voice for our work in at least one community.
• You attend sessions for our CTO and prepare read-outs.
• Review comments on our drafts get substantive responses on time.
• Working implementations exist for the claims our specifications make.
• By year two, you are authoring.

Qualifications

• 5 to 8 years of hands-on protocol or infrastructure engineering.
• Existing participation in a standards community, working group, or major open source project is a strong signal.
• Working knowledge in identity infrastructure, including technologies such as OAuth, OpenID Connect, PKI, DNS, Verifiable Credentials, or similar protocols.
• Demonstrated ability to write clearly under scrutiny.
• The composure to hold a technical position in a room of people more senior than you.
• Comfort moving between engineers, open source communities, and the occasional enterprise or government technical audience.
• Comfort operating as a delegate.
• A bias toward sustained, multi-year contribution over transactional relationship building.
• Ability to travel as needed.
• Ability to work across time zones as part of a global organization as needed.

Physical Requirements

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.

Location

Remote within the US from any of the following states: AZ, CA, CO, DE, MD, MA, MO, NJ, NV, NY, NC, OR, OK, PA, SC, TX, UT, VA, and WA.

Salary Range

The U.S. base salary range for this full-time position is $160,000 - $190,000 (flexibility based on experience) plus benefits as described below.

Benefits

• Generously subsidized medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Company contributions to a Health Savings Account.
• Company-paid life and disability insurance.
• Option to participate in employee-paid supplemental life, accidental death and dismemberment, critical illness, and accident insurance.
• 401(k) plan with up to a 5% match.
• 15 days of paid vacation yearly, increasing to 20 days after one year.
• 5 days of paid sick leave.
• 13 paid holidays.
• 20 weeks of paid parental leave for birthing parents, 12 weeks for others.
• Opportunity for tuition reimbursement for qualifying expenses.