Spring Security
Security filter chain configuration, JWT authentication, OAuth2 resource server setup, and role-based authorization rules.
1 / Security Filter Chains
Spring Security was the authentication and authorization layer across my Spring Boot applications. In Trajectory, it handled JWT token authentication, OAuth2 authorization code flows, and role-based access control for different user types.
2 / Configuration Precision
The critical lesson with Spring Security was that filter chain ordering matters far more than the documentation suggests. When combining JWT token validation with OAuth2 resource server configuration, a misconfigured filter chain silently processes requests through the wrong authentication path. I learned to write explicit SecurityFilterChain beans from the start rather than relying on auto-configured defaults that work for simple cases but break under composition.
3 / Multi-Tenant Context
In services that handled multiple user roles — candidates and recruiters in Trajectory, different agent permission levels in Conclave — Spring Security's method-level security annotations provided clean endpoint-level authorization. But the real security architecture happened at the data layer: ensuring that database queries were always scoped to the authenticated user's tenant context, not just the API endpoint.