Staff Software Engineer, Core Infrastructure - TS/SCI

Okta•Washington, DC

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

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. About Okta Okta is the leading independent identity partner, securely connecting the right people to the right technologies at the right time. With over 20,000 customers and a billion registered users, we provide the foundation for secure enterprise management and seamless user experiences. As a trusted U.S. Federal vendor, we maintain FedRAMP High and DoD IL4 compliance, and are on track to achieve DoD IL6 to support the government’s most critical and classified missions. The Core Engineering Team Our team builds the foundational shared infrastructure that powers the Okta Identity Cloud. We own mission-critical services—including distributed caching, configuration management, and asynchronous data pipelines—where multi-tenancy, massive scale, and "Always On" resiliency are the standard. We are a group of passionate engineers dedicated to resource optimization and architectural excellence. The Role We are seeking a Staff Backend Engineer (TS/SCI) to join our high-stakes National Security team. Based in the Washington, D.C. area, with on-site customer travel, you will serve as a technical leader, delivering secure, air-gapped solutions for our federal partners. Security Requirement: Must be able to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance (Secret or Top Secret) to the extent required by U.S. Government contracts. The selected candidate may be subject to drug testing to the extent required by U.S. Government contracts.

Requirements

Security Clearance: Active U.S. TS/SCI clearance.
Compliance Expertise: Proven experience navigating Federal and DoD compliance frameworks, specifically FedRAMP and Impact Level 6 (IL6).
Domain Authority: Deep expertise in architecting, deploying, and optimizing software within federal air-gapped environments.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field (Master’s degree preferred).
Backend Development: 5+ years of professional experience in an object-oriented language (specifically Java). You should possess a mastery of backend service architecture, multithreading, garbage collection, and memory management.
Orchestration & Cloud: 3+ years of experience developing and troubleshooting web services on Kubernetes. Hands-on experience with AWS EKS is highly preferred.
Database Management: 3+ years of experience with MySQL or equivalent relational databases, including sophisticated database design and query performance tuning.
API Design: Demonstrated success working with RESTful fundamentals; additional knowledge of gRPC is a significant plus.
Modern Tech Stack: Proficiency with the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Hibernate), Tomcat, Redis, and Docker.
Security & Engineering: Strong foundational knowledge of network security (authentication/authorization) and a commitment to rigorous software engineering best practices.
Industry Experience: Prior experience supporting or building Enterprise SaaS platforms.

Responsibilities

Cloud & Air-Gapped Infrastructure: Design and deliver AWS-based projects using Terraform, Docker, and Redis, adapting them for secure federal air-gapped environments.
Scalable Service Ownership: Operate and scale shared services and frameworks to support rapid business growth.
Engineering Standards: Drive high-quality code through rigorous design reviews, code reviews, and automated unit/functional testing.
System Reliability: Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize services to resolve performance bottlenecks and ensure high availability.
Technical Leadership: Mentor junior engineers and collaborate with cross-functional teams (QA, Security, Product) to deliver secure, enterprise-grade solutions.