Security Engineering & Operations Topics
Operational security practices, secure systems implementation, threat modeling, penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, and security operations at production scale. Covers network security, endpoint security, secure architecture implementation, incident response mechanics, and security automation. Distinct from Security & Compliance (which addresses governance, compliance frameworks, and policy) and from Security Research & Innovation (which addresses novel techniques and research contributions).
Security and Scalability Edge Cases
Understand security considerations in system design including: authentication and authorization patterns, encryption (at-rest and in-transit), preventing common vulnerabilities (SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, etc.), rate limiting and DDoS mitigation, and security in microservices. Also understand uncommon but important edge cases: how systems behave under extreme load (cascading failures, thundering herd, cache stampedes), partial failures in distributed systems, clock skew problems, Byzantine failures, and how to design systems that degrade gracefully. At Staff Level, think about security and scalability proactively when designing systems, not as an afterthought.
Authorization and Identity Systems
Design, implementation, and operation of identity and authorization systems that control who can access which resources and actions across products and services. Areas include customer identity management and identity lifecycle, authentication and token management using JSON Web Tokens and OAuth flows, session and token refresh and revocation strategies, API key lifecycle and rotation, role based access control and attribute based access control models, policy evaluation engines and permissions data modeling, placement of enforcement points across gateway, service, and data layers, caching of authorization decisions and cache invalidation strategies, preventing privilege escalation and secure default permissions, threat modeling and secure storage of secrets, logging and auditing for compliance, rate limiting tied to identity, testing strategies for authorization, and operational practices such as monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, graceful degradation, incident response, and recovery for authorization services. Candidates without direct IAM experience should explain how core backend system skills translate to this domain.
Authentication and Authorization
Cover core concepts and implementation trade offs for securing backend services. Candidates should demonstrate understanding of token based authentication and server side session strategies, how to securely issue and rotate credentials, techniques for revocation and refresh, secure storage of secrets, use of third party identity providers, common threat mitigations such as cross site request forgery protection and secure transmission practices, and design patterns for role based and attribute based access control. Interviewers will evaluate the candidate ability to reason about scalability and revocation trade offs and to design secure application programming interface permission checks.
Authentication and Access Control
Comprehensive coverage of methods, protocols, design principles, and practical mechanisms for proving identity and enforcing permissions across systems. Authentication topics include credential based methods such as passwords and secure password storage, Multi Factor Authentication, one time passwords, certificate based and passwordless authentication, biometric options, federated identity and single sign on using Open Authorization, OpenID Connect and Security Assertion Markup Language, and service identity approaches such as Kerberos and mutual Transport Layer Security. Covers token based and session based patterns including JSON Web Token and session cookies, secure cookie practices, token lifecycle and refresh strategies, token revocation approaches, refresh token design, and secure storage and transport of credentials and tokens. Authorization and access control topics include role based access control, attribute based access control, discretionary and mandatory access control, access control lists and policy based access control, Open Authorization scopes and permission modeling, privilege management and the principle of least privilege, and defenses against privilege escalation and broken access control. The description also addresses cryptographic foundations that underlie identity systems including symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, public key infrastructure and certificate lifecycle management, secure key management and rotation, and encryption in transit and at rest. Common threats and mitigations are covered, such as credential stuffing, brute force attacks, replay attacks, session fixation, cross site request forgery, broken authentication logic, rate limiting, account lockout strategies, secrets management, secure transport, and careful authorization checks. Candidates should be able to design authentication and authorization flows for both user and service identities, evaluate protocol and implementation trade offs, specify secure lifecycle and storage strategies for credentials and tokens, and propose mitigations for common failures and attacks.