Staff Software Engineer (Federal)

Okta•San Francisco, CA

4d•$174,000 - $239,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Okta Identity Governance Team is responsible for critical enterprise identity workflows, including access requests, approvals, entitlement enforcement, and audit compliance. This team is a leading contributor to Okta's new product bookings and operates within large enterprises, managing hundreds of thousands of identities across thousands of applications. The team is expanding to support highly classified government environments. As a Staff Fullstack Engineer on the OIG (Federal) team, your mission is to adapt the OIG product for government customers. You will design, build, and maintain backend services and frontend interfaces, focusing on AI-native engineering, distributed systems, and secure, scalable access with the principle of least privilege.

Requirements

Must be a U.S. Citizen. Candidate must possess an active clearance or have the ability to obtain and maintain a high-level government security clearance (e.g., Secret / Top Secret / SCI) based on mission requirements.
8+ years in software engineering, shipping enterprise cloud software
Hands-on depth in coding at scale using: Java, Python, or TypeScript, plus API (REST, gRPC) and UI automation (Playwright, Selenium, or equivalent)
Experience with CI/CD (CircleCI or equivalent), containers (Docker, Kubernetes), and a major cloud platform
Operates well beyond basic AI tool usage - understands how to apply AI meaningfully across the full software development lifecycle, can evaluate and adopt new AI tooling with good judgment, and is able to establish practices and bring a team along.
Proven experience defining scalable backend architectures and integrating complex APIs with modern web technologies - including the ability to make and defend architectural decisions with lasting org-wide impact.
Solid understanding of web authentication and authorization fundamentals - how auth flows work, and best practices for securing sensitive user data.
Architectural expertise: Proven experience defining scalable backend architectures and integrating complex APIs with modern web technologies, including making decisions with lasting, org-wide impact.
Backend proficiency: Deep expertise in building reliable, secure, enterprise-grade software in Java or another type-safe language.
Frontend flexibility: High proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript with true fullstack range, including the ability to ship robust frontends.

Nice To Haves

Federal Infrastructure Expertise: Hands-on experience building, scaling, and troubleshooting infrastructure in restricted environments (e.g., FedRAMP Medium/High, DoD Impact Levels, or air-gapped systems).
Network & Security Isolation: Solid understanding of air-gap architectures, strict access controls, zero-trust frameworks, and data diode/secure transfer mechanisms.
Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) — access requests, certifications, entitlement management, separation of duties, or role modeling (Okta, SailPoint, Saviynt, One Identity, Oracle, or in-house)
Identity and Access Management more broadly: SSO, SCIM provisioning, directory integration, or privileged access
Work experience in a compliance context — SOX, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or FedRAMP — including audit evidence validation

Responsibilities

Architect, deploy, and maintain cloud and on-premises infrastructure across high-compliance security baselines.
Support operations transitioning into disconnected, air-gapped, and top-secret defense environments.
Maintain strict security controls, audit readiness, and continuous monitoring for classified networks.
Collaborate with other engineering teams to ensure software deployments meet stringent governmental security standards.
Proactively identify and prioritize tech debt; drive improvements in areas beyond feature work - CI/CD, observability, documentation, reliability, and support processes.
Partner with Product and Design to understand and own the desired customer outcome, not just the technical deliverable.
Actively invest in the growth of peer engineers, taking responsibility for raising the technical bar of the team as a whole.