Job Description

Get to know Okta

Okta is The World’s Identity Company. We free everyone to safely use any technology, anywhere, on any device or app. Our flexible and neutral products, Okta Platform and Auth0 Platform, provide secure access, authentication, and automation, placing identity at the core of business security and growth.

At Okta, we celebrate a variety of perspectives and experiences. We are not looking for someone who checks every single box - we’re looking for lifelong learners and people who can make us better with their unique experiences.

Join our team! We’re building a world where Identity belongs to you.

The Team

The Okta Privileged Access Management (PAM) team is building the future of identity for machines, services, and applications. We are seeking a world-class Staff Engineer to help us architect and build the high-performance core of our non-human identity platform.

Your work, in close collaboration with our principal engineers and architects, will be the foundation of our strategy for managing privileged access in the modern enterprise. If you are a systems programmer who thrives on influencing the design of high-performance, concurrent, and resilient security software, this is the role for you.

What you’ll be doing

• Contribute to Core Architecture:
  • Partner with principal engineers and architects to design and implement a low-latency, high-throughput secrets engine for non-human identities
• Solve for Massive Scale:
  • Write highly concurrent, performance-critical code capable of handling millions of machine-to-machine authentication and authorization requests
• Shape Technical Strategy:
  • Play a key role in defining the long-term technical roadmap for scalability and performance, ensuring our platform can meet the demands of the largest enterprises
• Mentor and Elevate:
  • As a senior engineer on the team, you will work with junior engineers to help them advance their SDLC expertise.
• On-Call:
  • Participate in the rotational on-call activities with SRE and product development team

What you’ll bring to the role

• Required Experience:
  • 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a heavy focus on backend or systems-level development
  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience
• Core Technical Expertise:
  • Deep, hands-on expertise in multi-platform Go development and building high-performance, concurrent applications
  • Experience designing or operating distributed systems
  • Experience with secure systems (authn/authz, encryption, TLS, token handling, PKI, CAs, diagnosing TLS issues)
  • Deep expertise in distributed storage systems, with a focus on replication, backup, and restore, and data management. (Postgres, etc.)
  • Direct experience designing, building, or contributing to a secrets management, service mesh, or machine identity platform
  • Expert-level at ergonomic API design (gRPC/openAPI), and building for reliability at scale
  • Deep knowledge of cloud-native infrastructure
• Key Attributes:
  • You are driven by the challenge of optimizing systems for performance, latency, and throughput, with a proven ability to diagnose complex, multi-system issues
  • You have a proven track record of making significant contributions to the architecture of complex, mission-critical systems
  • You thrive in an environment where you can focus on deep technical problems
• Bonus Points:
  • Experience at a leading Cybersecurity or Infrastructure-as-Code company
  • Contributions to open-source projects in the identity, security, or infrastructure space

And extra credit if you have experience in any of the following!

• Deep expertise in backend systems engineering
• Experience building and scaling beyond standard three-tier monolithic architectures, with a focus on modern distributed systems
• Have worked on projects with complex, established systems
• Possess significant, hands-on experience in a Linux/Unix environment

Additional requirements:

• This position requires the ability to access federal environments and/or have access to protected federal data. As a condition of employment for this position, the successful candidate must be able to submit documentation establishing U.S. Person status (e.g. a U.S. Citizen, National, Lawful Permanent Resident, Refugee, or Asylee. 22 CFR 120.15) upon hire.

This role requires in-person onboarding and travel to our San Francisco office.

#LI-SM1

#LI-Hybrid

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Below is the annual base salary range for candidates located in San Francisco Bay Area. Your actual base salary will depend on factors such as your skills, qualifications, experience, and work location. In addition, Okta offers equity (where applicable), bonus, and benefits, including health, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), flexible spending account, and paid leave (including PTO and parental leave) in accordance with our applicable plans and policies. To learn more about our Total Rewards program please visit: https://rewards.okta.com/us

The annual base salary range for this position for candidates located in the San Francisco Bay area is between: $194,000—$267,000 USD

What you can look forward to as a Full-Time Okta employee!

• Amazing Benefits
• Making Social Impact
• Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community at Okta

Some roles may require travel to one of our office locations for in-person onboarding.

Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, or status as a protected veteran. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and convictions records, consistent with applicable laws.

If reasonable accommodation is needed to complete any part of the job application, interview process, or onboarding please use this Form to request an accommodation.

Notice for New York City Applicants & Employees: Okta may use Automated Employment Decision Tools (AEDT), as defined by New York City Local Law 144, that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other automated processes to assist in our recruitment and hiring process. In accordance with NYC Local Law 144, if you are an applicant or employee residing in New York City, please click here to view our full NYC AEDT Notice.

Okta is committed to complying with applicable data privacy and security laws and regulations. For more information, please see our Personnel and Job Candidate Privacy Notice at https://www.okta.com/legal/personnel-policy/.