Standards Architect

Affinidi is a technology company focused on empowering businesses and individuals with control and ownership of their data through decentralized digital identity solutions. The Standards Architect will lead the organization's engagement with global standards bodies (W3C, DIF, ToIP) to shape, author, and implement open standards in the decentralized technology space. A key focus is on AI Agent identity and data exchange, ensuring Affinidi's products are interoperable, secure, privacy-preserving, and aligned with emerging open standards.

Must Have

• Lead engagement with standards bodies (DIF, W3C, LF, ToIP) to represent interests and drive evolution of standards definitions.
• Develop and execute a standards roadmap aligned to product and technology strategy.
• Define and champion agent identity primitives, agent-to-agent protocols, and data exchange patterns.
• Track and synthesise developments across competing standards to advise product and engineering.
• Draft, review, and co-author specifications, white papers, and implementation guides.
• Evangelise products and services in the context of open standards and innovations.
• Participate in driving the lifecycle of products by providing guidance based on current open standards.
• Work closely with engineering, product and design teams, from ideation to launch.
• Translate standards into engineering-ready artifacts (SDK, API contracts, schema registries, policy templates).
• Maintain reference architectures and conformance profiles that map standards to product capabilities.
• Collaborate with Solution Architects and Business Development teams to address customer needs.
• Provide input through market trends analysis, voice-of-the-customer, and competitive landscape.
• Partner with legal, security, and platform teams to ensure privacy-by-design and trust-by-design.
• Communicate effectively across functions, including to executive management.

About the Company

Affinidi is a technology company dedicated to changing data ownership for good. We empower businesses and individuals with control and ownership of their data, with a comprehensive approach to managing their holistic identity – accounting for all aspects of their digital footprint while ensuring privacy and security.

Affinidi’s technology enables users to benefit from decentralised digital identity solutions. We believe that everyone has the right to own and control their data, and we are committed to creating a trusted digital credentials ecosystem that empowers businesses and individuals to securely exchange data and services across borders and industries.

Affinidi is seeking a suitable candidate for the role of Standards Architect to lead the organisation’s engagement with global standards bodies. Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer as part of the Office of the CTO, the role will help shape, author, and implement open standards across the decentralised technology space, with a focus on both human and AI agent actors. The role drives technical and governance convergence with groups such as W3C, Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), Trust over IP (ToIP), and other relevant consortia, ensuring products, services and tools are interoperable, secure, privacy-preserving, future-proof, and aligned with emerging, new and existing open standards. A core focus area for this role is AI Agent identity and data exchange, including emerging specifications for agent identifiers, verifiable data, secure messaging, consent, provenance, and trust frameworks.

The Product Portfolio exists within three parallel go-to-market paradigms:

(1) Holistic Identity

From a Consumer perspective, holistic identity is about reclaiming your data, reclaiming your identity, and ultimately reclaiming your digital self. It gives you ownership of your own data, power over how you represent yourself, and the ability to exchange details about yourself with others in exchange for value (experience, discounts, exclusivity, opportunity …, etc.).

(2) Trust Network

From a business perspective, we believe that businesses need to operate their own trust networks, which determine the connectivity and exchange of information within their ecosystem. In addition to this, they may also be members of many other trust networks, participating in different contexts.

(3) Trust Infrastructure

For the emerging world of the Internet of AI Agents, we believe that all actors need identity – including agents. When humans interact with agents, and agents act on behalf of humans in an autonomous way, the delegation of control of data, the provenance and attestability of that data, and the consent and revocation of access to that data, is paramount.

At Affinidi, we:

• Scale through peers and partners.
• Work with standards bodies to help steer the evolution of decentralised technology standards.
• Are committed to open standards and open sourcing.
• Provide products for Consumers, Developers and Businesses.
• Sell to Businesses, evangelize to Developers, and market to Consumers.

As the Standards Architect, you will:

• Lead the engagement with standards bodies (such as DIF, W3C, LF, ToIP and more) to represent interests in driving evolution of standards definitions, in line with the organisation’s goals. Actively participating, contributing, and taking leadership roles (eg. editor, chair) where strategic.
• Develop and execute a standards roadmap aligned to product and technology strategy, covering decentralized identity (SSI, DIDs, VCs), trust frameworks, secure data exchange, and emerging AI agent identity protocols.
• Define and champion agent identity primitives (identifiers, credentials, keys, attestations), agent-to-agent protocols (AuthN/AuthZ, capability negotiation, discovery, intent signalling), and data exchange patterns (consent/revocation, selective disclosure, data minimisation).
• Track and synthesise developments across competing standards to advise product and engineering on adoption timing, risk, upside, and ecosystem positioning.
• Draft, review, and co-author specifications, white papers, and implementation guides from DID methods and trust frameworks, to agent interoperability protocols and secure messaging layers - and more.
• Evangelise products and services in the context of open standards and Affinidi-specific innovations to standards organisations, external customers, peers and partners. Help drive hackathons and working group sessions to drive adoption among partners and external developers. Publish blogs, technical briefs, and conference talks establishing voice on decentralized identity and AI agent data exchange.
• Participate in driving the lifecycle of products, services and tools by providing guidance and advice based on current open standards and state-of-the-art approaches taken by others in the community.
• Work closely with the engineering, product and design teams, from ideation to launch and continued iteration thereafter, ensuring alignment with strategic goals. Translate standards into engineering-ready artifacts to help define SDK and API contracts, schema registries, policy templates, and sample implementations.
• Maintain reference architectures and conformance profiles that map standards to product capabilities and engineering backlogs.
• Collaborate with Solution Architects (SA) and Business Development (BD) teams to address customer needs and incorporate feedback into the product strategy and technical requirements.
• Provide input through market trends analysis, voice-of-the-customer, emerging and evolving open standards, and the overall competitive landscape to help the product team shape a clear product vision.
• Partner with legal, security, and platform teams to ensure privacy-by-design and trust-by-design.
• Build and maintain strategic partnerships with standards bodies, technical and industry organizations to achieve product objectives.
• Communicate effectively across functions, including to executive management, ensuring clarity around product plans, status updates, and critical issues - in narrative and verbal formats.

You will be a great match for Standards Architect if you have:

• 10 years in architecture or standards-driven roles, with 5 years in SSI/decentralised identity, cryptographic protocols, and trust frameworks.
• Proven track record of open source software collaboration, and contributions to W3C, DIF, ToIP, LF, IETF, ISO/IEC, or similar relevant bodies.
• Deep knowledge of: DIDs and contemporary methods (web/webvh, key, peer, SCIDs etc), VC issuance/revocation, PKI, key management, SD, ZKP and other relevant cryptography and credential implementations and frameworks; wallets, issuer/verifier, registries, trust lists; agent-to-agent protocols, authN/AuthZ frameworks, privacy-preserving data exchange; JSON-LD, CBOR, schema registries; consent, reputation and discovery.
• Competent and comfortable positioning trade-offs between technologies such as KERI, blockchain and other ledger implementations.
• Skilled in cross-functional collaboration with teams across engineering, design, business development, marketing, legal, finance, and strategy.
• Experience translating complex standards into executive-ready insights and engineering-ready recommendations and artifacts.
• Have outstanding organization and project management skills, with the ability to prioritize tasks effectively, manage timelines, and deliver complex projects on time while balancing stakeholder expectations.
• Obsessed with customers and passionate about creating world-changing products.
• Are a self-starter and take end-to-end ownership in bringing your ideas to life.

Equal Opportunity

We believe in hiring different and diverse talent and providing a safe space where everyone can share their views without fear, where differences are celebrated, and where no one is left out. Inclusive cultures are the foundation for collaboration and innovation within our team.

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