Cloud Infrastructure Architect, Okta Federal

Okta•Washington, DC

13d•$244,000 - $336,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Okta Federal is seeking a Cloud Platform Architect for TDI Infrastructure Engineering. This role serves as the technical authority for designing, building, and evolving the cloud infrastructure that supports Okta's AI platform and other business workloads. The architect will define architectural standards, patterns, and strategies for the Cloud Platform Engineering team and partner with AI, security, and productivity architects to scale Okta's cloud capabilities. This is a hands-on builder role requiring experience shipping cloud infrastructure at scale and making sound architectural decisions in a fast-paced environment. The role is critical during a time of rapid AI platform scaling, cloud platform team transformation, and foundational infrastructure decisions that will shape the company's trajectory.

Requirements

10+ years of hands-on cloud infrastructure experience with deep expertise in AWS, GCP, or Azure (AWS preferred), covering compute, networking, storage, IAM, and managed services at enterprise scale.
Proven experience designing and operating Kubernetes and EKS at scale, including cluster architecture, multi-tenancy patterns, networking, security hardening, and day-2 operations.
Experience architecting infrastructure for AI and machine learning workloads (GPU compute, model serving, data pipeline infrastructure, security, and access patterns).
Demonstrated experience making intentional cloud provider placement decisions, evaluating workloads against provider capabilities, cost, compliance, and organizational footprint.
Strong cloud security background (IAM design, network segmentation, secrets management, policy-as-code, experience with SOC 2, FedRAMP, or equivalent compliance frameworks).
Solid understanding of enterprise identity and access management patterns (federated identity, SSO, SCIM) and experience integrating cloud workloads with identity providers like Okta.
Infrastructure-as-code fluency (Terraform, AWS CDK, or equivalent) with experience building and maintaining reusable, modular IaC at enterprise scale.
Demonstrated ability to influence without authority, driving architectural alignment across engineering, security, product, and business stakeholders.
Active U.S. TS/SCI with polygraph security clearance.
Must be located in the United States.
Must be on U.S. soil (50 states, District of Columbia, or outlying areas of the United States).
Must be able to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance (Secret or Top Secret) as required by U.S. Government contracts.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing or operating cloud infrastructure for FedRAMP authorized environments or federal programs.
Designing infrastructure for completely air-gapped networks, Sovereign Clouds, or DoD Impact Level 6/7 environments.
Hands-on experience building or operating AI agent platforms (orchestration frameworks, vector databases, model routing, inference optimization).
FinOps experience (cloud cost governance, chargeback models, commitment-based discount strategies, rightsizing at scale).
Platform engineering for internal developer platforms (IDP) (developer self-service, golden paths, guardrails).
Service mesh technologies such as Istio or Linkerd in production Kubernetes environments.
Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKS, CKAD) or AWS certifications (Solutions Architect Professional, Security Specialty).
Familiarity with cloud-native security operations platforms such as Google SecOps (Chronicle) (log ingestion architecture, data residency, GCP IAM integration).
Familiarity with DoD/IC DevSecOps reference architectures and networking, including cross-domain solutions (CDS) and deploying DevOps tools like "Big Bang" via Iron Bank hardened containers.

Responsibilities

Define and own Okta's Cloud Platform architecture, establishing reference architectures, design standards, and guardrails for consistency, security, and reliability.
Lead the architecture for Kubernetes and EKS, including cluster strategy, multi-tenancy, networking, and security posture for AI agent workloads and business unit deployments.
Elevate Okta's AI platform by partnering with AI architects and platform engineers to evolve agent and model-serving infrastructure into a production-grade, scalable platform.
Drive multi-cloud strategy by building evaluation frameworks and decision criteria for leveraging AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, optimizing for performance, cost, and capability.
Serve as the technical anchor for the Cloud Platform Engineering team, improving architectural quality during the transformation from account vending to a managed platform model.
Partner cross-functionally with AI, security, and productivity architects, product managers, and business unit stakeholders to align cloud infrastructure decisions with product, compliance, and operational requirements, including federal programs and FedRAMP environments.
Partner cross-functionally to design cloud-native solutions adaptable for air-gapped, self-hosted environments like US Secret (SIPRNet) and US Top Secret (JWICS).
Help architect and validate foundational Kubernetes and infrastructure designs within unclassified AWS GovCloud sandboxes, ensuring seamless translation to emulators simulating air-gapped network constraints.
Ensure commercial cloud platform architecture shares foundational DNA with regulated deployments, aligning with DoD-centric frameworks and utilizing Iron Bank hardened containers.