Not long ago, engineering teams mainly focused on building and running systems. That was the job. But if you look at the average engineer’s job role today, it’s a very different picture.
The average tech stack has expanded massively, to include multiple clouds, clusters, databases, and environments, not to mention a growing number of tools, services, and AI agents. Each new system introduces its own credentials, approvals, and security controls, and it’s falling to engineers to manage them all.
What once sat comfortably within a security team’s remit is now deeply intertwined with engineering work. Modern infrastructure isn’t a single stack owned by one team; it’s a sprawling, interconnected mix of systems that all require identity to function. That makes the ‘how’ of securing access an engineering problem by default.
It’s been a quiet shift, but a significant one. Security has become an engineering burden, and it’s taking a real human toll: higher stress, constant on-call interruptions, and widespread burnout across teams.
Access chaos is draining teams
Managing security infrastructure is no easy task. Engineers are expected to keep track of SSH keys, cloud credentials, API tokens, VPN access, MFA challenges, and compliance evidence spread across dozens of systems. To make matters worse, these workflows are usually fragmented and manual, stitched together with scripts, ticket queues, or institutional memory.
The result is what many teams now call ‘access chaos’: a constant stream of interruptions like expired tokens, misconfigured permissions, or failed MFA prompts, that repeatedly break engineers out of ‘flow’ and slow down productivity.
It’s not surprising, then, that nearly two-thirds of engineers reported burnout last year.
Blame fragmented identity
This being said, it’s easy to fall into the trap of blaming security measures for access chaos. The reality is, security is not the enemy – fragmented identity is.
Identity becomes fragmented when user accounts, credentials, and permissions are scattered across multiple systems, tools, and environments. Most traditional security models still rely on ‘secrets’, such as long-lived keys, passwords, tokens, certificates, and shared logins.
Engineering teams are left managing these secrets: distributing them, rotating them, revoking them, monitoring them, auditing them… often across systems that don’t ‘talk’ to each other. And it’s a vicious cycle, with every new secret widening the attack surface and creating more opportunities for mistakes or breaches… and that’s all without even thinking about compliance! Teams also have to prove least privilege access, track approvals, and show that access has been properly revoked.
All of this means engineers are spending more time patching the gaps in outdated access patterns than actually building or running systems. The chaos isn’t caused by security itself; it’s caused by identity being spread too thin across disconnected systems.
A unified identity approach
Until identity is unified and automated, engineers will keep carrying a burden they never signed up for. So, the million-dollar question becomes: “How do we unify identity?”
The first step is to eliminate anonymity. Every server, laptop, database, cloud account, human, and AI agent needs a unique identity issued from a single source. Architecturally, these identities should be managed consistently, so you approach all identities (human, AI, or otherwise) as if they’re all company employees.
Next, ensure that all identities are cryptographically verifiable and hardware-protected, inspired by zero-trust principles. It begins with a single private key, securely stored in hardware. Each identity is digitally derived from this key material, making it effectively impossible to steal, clone, sell, or otherwise compromise.
In addition to this, implementing attribute-based access control (ABAC) makes a significant impact in ensuring permissions adapt dynamically based on roles, environments, or context, rather than through manual ticketing. ABAC can also incorporate just-in-time access, granting engineers temporary permissions only when they need them, which in turn reduces the number of standing privileges, limits exposure to security risks, and ensures engineers aren’t bogged down with unnecessary approvals.
Combined, ABAC and just-in-time access streamline access management and automate compliance reporting, cutting hundreds of hours of manual work each year. Teams no longer need to track approvals or prove access revocation manually; the system just enforces it automatically.
Ultimately, engineer burnout isn’t inevitable, and security doesn’t have to be a constant burden. With unified identity, automated credential management, and just-in-time access controls, organizations can cut through the chaos that pulls engineers away from their work.
The result is clear: fewer interruptions and on-call escalations, stronger security, and compliance that largely takes care of itself. Most importantly, engineers can focus on what they were hired to do – building and running systems – while burnout becomes the exception rather than the rule.
