Staff Data Engineer - Federal (Auth0)

Okta•Washington, DC

20h•Hybrid

About The Position

This role is a technical leadership position within Auth0's Data Engineering team, focusing on strategic platform initiatives, particularly achieving FEDRamp compliance and driving the architectural evolution of the core data platform. The Staff Data Engineer will lead the discovery, design, and implementation of the next-generation data architecture, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security. This is a high-impact role that involves cross-functional collaboration with data, platform, and security teams to define and execute the architectural roadmap. The position requires a seasoned engineer adept at solving complex, ambiguous problems and driving technical alignment. Due to the strategic nature of upcoming projects, this position is open only to US citizens or Green Card holders currently residing in the United States. Additionally, there is a related role for a Staff Software Engineer in the DC area, focusing on Okta's Public Sector roadmap within the Defensive Cyber Engineering organization. This role involves building data and infrastructure platforms to support Okta's security capabilities, leveraging software, data, and security engineering skills with a focus on automation, policy-as-code, and cloud-native technologies. This position requires the ability to access federal environments and/or have access to protected federal data, necessitating U.S. Person status upon hire.

Requirements

8+ years of software development experience, with at least 5+ years in a data engineering or data platform role.
Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale, cross-functional technical projects.
Extensive experience architecting and deploying data infrastructure in a cloud environment (AWS strongly preferred).
Deep architectural knowledge of the modern data stack, including data warehouses (Snowflake), transformation tools (dbt), and orchestrators (Airflow).
Strong proficiency in Python and SQL, with a high bar for code quality and system design.
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to create clarity and drive decisions on complex technical topics.
The ability to deal with ambiguity, define a path forward, and lead others to successful outcomes.
8+ years of strong coding and scripting experience, with a focus on building automation and custom tooling for infrastructure and data pipelines.
Experience with Python is required; proficiency in other languages (e.g., Bash, PowerShell, Go) is a plus.
Experience developing and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines for onboarding security data into Okta’s security data lake.
Experience working with security teams to integrate log sources and ensure seamless data ingestion.
Ability to build and maintain scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines to process security event data.
Proven track record of automating security controls and workflows using a cloud-first approach.
Experience with Terraform and other infrastructure-as-code tools to orchestrate security infrastructure.
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines for security automation and drift management.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to collaborate with technical staff, support teams, executive leadership, and external vendors.
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.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with security compliance frameworks like FEDRamp, SOC2, or HIPAA.
Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and container orchestration (Kubernetes).
Experience working in government cloud environments (e.g., AWS GovCloud).
Familiarity with the Identity Access & Management (IAM) domain.
2+ years of experience building engineering solutions within highly regulated environments such as FedRAMP High, IL4, IL5, and/or IL6 is a plus.
Current or previous Secret, Top Secret (TS), or Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance is a plus.
Advanced identity management technologies (MFA, SAML, OAuth, OIDC, WebAuthn)
Deep understanding of Okta's ecosystem, including advanced configuration and integrations
Experience with continuous compliance solutions (e.g., policy-as-code, automated evidence gathering)

Responsibilities

Lead the architectural design and evolution of our data platform, defining the roadmap for its future state.
Drive technical strategy for large-scale platform enhancements, balancing long-term goals with incremental delivery.
Collaborate deeply with engineers and leaders from other data, platform, and security teams to create a unified and secure architecture.
Produce architectural artifacts, including design documents, threat models, and technical specifications, to create clarity and alignment for complex initiatives.
Act as a technical mentor and force-multiplier for the Data Engineering team, elevating the performance of the group through guidance, code reviews, and sharing best practices.
Implement foundational components of new architecture, proving out designs with hands-on coding and providing a model for other engineers to follow.
Build data and infrastructure platforms by leveraging software, data, and security engineering skills.
Use automation, policy-as-code, and cloud-native technologies to deliver scalable, resilient, and secure solutions.
Serve as a security subject matter expert (SME) for solution engineering and architecture reviews, preferably in the Detection and Response and/or enterprise security tooling space.
Lead technical efforts to evaluate, design, and implement new enterprise security systems and feature enhancements.
Build, maintain, and enhance custom automation and cloud infrastructure using Terraform or similar tools to support team workflows and enforce security controls.
Develop integrations with APIs, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), and security infrastructure to improve detection, response, and remediation.
Write and maintain scripts and automations, with an emphasis on Python-based solutions, to streamline security operations.
Establish monitoring and alerting for security posture, misconfigurations, and threats across endpoints, SaaS, and cloud workloads.
Proactively identify and remediate security gaps; stay updated on emerging threats, solutions, and tooling across the industry.