Staff Identity Engineer, Okta
$161-221k
Management platform securing resources from cloud to ground
Be an early applicant
Management platform securing resources from cloud to ground
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$161-221k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To improve the connections between people and tools to make companies more productive and secure.
Role
Who you are
- To be successful in this role, you should have deep, hands-on architectural experience across the modern identity and cloud infrastructure lifecycle. We are looking for a practitioner who understands both theory and real-world implementation
- Domain Experience: 4+ years of hands-on experience designing, implementing, and maintaining enterprise-scale IAM solutions
- Okta Platform Mastery: Deep expertise in managing complex enterprise Okta environments, including hands-on proficiency with Okta Identity Engine (OIE), Directory Integrations, Advanced Policies, Workflows, and Platform APIs
- Core Identity Protocols: Advanced expertise in modern authentication and authorization standards (OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SAML 2.0) and phishing-resistant MFA paradigms (FIDO2/WebAuthn, Passkeys)
- Cloud & Infrastructure as Code: Proven experience defining identity controls as code using Terraform and Okta Workflows. Practical experience designing cloud IAM guardrails across multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) and M2M/service-to-service authentication
- Session & Zero Trust Security: Solid background in session lifecycle security, token management/revocation strategies, and continuous access evaluations (CAEP/eSSO) to mitigate session hijacking
- Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers, driving design reviews, and establishing engineering best practices across teams
- Compliance & Automation Mindset: Strong orientation toward automation-first design, with practical experience building identity controls that align with enterprise frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP)
- Travel: Occasional travel required as needed
- U.S. soil status - the employee must be on U.S. soil, which means the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or outlying areas of the United States, as defined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 2.101, and be a U.S. person
- U.S. person status - the employee must be either a U.S. citizen as defined in 42 U.S. Code § 9102; a natural person who is a lawful permanent resident as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20) or who is a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3); or a U.S. national (i.e. includes citizens and non-citizens born in outlying possessions such as American Samoa and Swains Island), green card holders, refugees, and asylees. Working on a U.S. visa does NOT qualify as a U.S. person
What the job involves
- As a Staff Engineer at Okta, you will be a technical authority within our internal IAM team, driving the architecture and execution of our identity fabric
- You will champion our "Customer Zero" philosophy, partnering with product engineering to deploy Okta's newest features internally before they reach global markets
- This role requires a technical leader who acts with ownership and urgency, turning action into traction and ruthlessly simplifying complex problems
- You will serve as a mentor, influence architectural decisions, and help determine the future of the platform
- Drive Customer Zero Execution: Act as a key technical bridge between internal stakeholders, the Okta on Okta team, and core Product teams. Lead the early adoption of cutting-edge internal capabilities, providing rigorous technical feedback to mature products before global release
- Architecture & Hands-On Implementation: Own the lifecycle, policy design, adaptive MFA, and federation (SAML, OIDC) for enterprise Okta tenants. Architect and enforce cloud IAM guardrails across AWS, GCP, and Azure, building API-based pipelines to automate complex workflows
- Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a core technical anchor for the engineering team. Mentor engineers, act as a primary review authority for IAM designs, and set technical standards across the organization
- Operational & Security Governance: Drive automation-first initiatives to eliminate systemic inefficiencies. Partner directly with Security, Audit, and Compliance teams to ensure identity controls natively meet audit requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP)
- AI Security Integration: Drive the secure adoption of AI technologies by governing AI agents, machine identities, and service-to-service authentication within the enterprise identity layer
- Cross-Functional Partnering & Metrics: Collaborate with cross-functional partners to advance identity security, establish operational KPIs, and translate complex technical milestones into actionable leadership updates
Our take
Okta started off as an identity company where organisations, large and small, could tap into the company to have a single sign-on interface to access all cloud applications now centralised. Okta has since expanded to provide identity management at the device as well as the server level.
The new approach towards network security is increasingly based on identification and authentication, and Okta is on track to become the go-to vendor in the space. It aims to do so by developing products that enable people to access applications and other tools more smoothly and securely than ever before.
Okta has taken strides towards expansion through significant employee growth and shuffling executive leadership. The company has also made lateral moves such as tackling governance concerns, opening up new paths for revenue.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
19% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Sep 2015
$75m
SERIES F
Jun 2014
$75m
SERIES E
Total funding: $229.3m
Company benefits
- Work from home opportunities
- Health + Wellness
- Financial Benefits
- Pay + Incentives
- Time Off
- Everyday Living
- Resources
Company HQ
The East Cut, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Todd McKinnon
(Co-Founder & CEO)VP of Development at Salesforce.com and has nearly a decade of experience in various engineering and leadership roles at PeopleSoft.
Frederic Kerrest
(Co-Founder & Vice Chairman)Worked in Sales and Business Development at Salesforce.com, and previously co-founded high-tech consulting firm Meridian Global Solutions.
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