Staff Software Engineer (TS/SCI)

Okta•Maryland, MD

5d•$147,000 - $202,000

About The Position

As a Staff Fullstack Engineer on Okta’s Identity Governance (OIG) Federal team, you will adapt the OIG product to the needs of government customers. You will design, build, and maintain robust backend services and intuitive frontend interfaces, applying deep distributed-systems expertise and AI-native engineering practices to deliver secure, interoperable, and scalable access that enforces least privilege. The role supports OIG’s expansion into highly secure and classified government environments. It includes architecting and maintaining cloud and on-premises infrastructure, supporting disconnected and air-gapped operations, maintaining security controls and audit readiness, and coordinating with engineering teams to meet government security standards. You will also improve technical foundations beyond feature work and help raise the technical bar across the team. The employee must be a U.S. citizen, be located on U.S. soil as defined in the posting, and possess or be able to obtain and maintain the required government security clearance. The posting lists an annual base salary range of $147,000–$202,000 for candidates in specified states; actual salary depends on qualifications, experience, and work location. Okta also offers equity where applicable, bonus, and benefits.

Requirements

Must be a U.S. citizen.
Must possess an active clearance or be able to obtain and maintain a high-level government security clearance based on mission requirements; the posting specifies active TS/SCI with Full Scope Poly and also states Secret or Top Secret clearance eligibility as required by government contracts.
Must be on U.S. soil, defined as the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or U.S. outlying areas under FAR 2.101.
At least 8 years of software engineering experience shipping enterprise cloud software.
Hands-on coding experience at scale using Java, Python, or TypeScript, along with REST or gRPC APIs and UI automation such as Playwright, Selenium, or equivalent.
Experience with CI/CD such as CircleCI or equivalent, containers such as Docker and Kubernetes, and a major cloud platform.
Ability to apply AI meaningfully across the software development lifecycle, evaluate and adopt AI tools, and establish practices that bring a team along.
Experience defining scalable backend architectures and integrating complex APIs with modern web technologies, including making and defending architectural decisions with lasting organizational impact.
Solid understanding of web authentication and authorization fundamentals and best practices for protecting sensitive user data.
Deep expertise building reliable, secure, enterprise-grade software in Java or another type-safe language.
High proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript and the ability to ship robust frontends.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience building, scaling, and troubleshooting infrastructure in restricted environments such as FedRAMP Medium/High, DoD Impact Levels, or air-gapped systems.
Understanding of air-gap architectures, strict access controls, zero-trust frameworks, and data diode or secure transfer mechanisms.
Identity Governance and Administration experience, including access requests, certifications, entitlement management, separation of duties, or role modeling, using Okta, SailPoint, Saviynt, One Identity, Oracle, or in-house systems.
Broader Identity and Access Management experience, including SSO, SCIM provisioning, directory integration, or privileged access.
Compliance-context experience involving SOX, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or FedRAMP, including audit evidence validation.
Experience navigating Federal and DoD compliance frameworks, specifically FedRAMP and Impact Level 6 (IL6).

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 engineering teams to ensure software deployments meet stringent governmental security standards.
Identify and prioritize technical debt and improve CI/CD, observability, documentation, reliability, and support processes.
Partner with Product and Design to understand and own desired customer outcomes.
Invest in peer engineers’ growth and raise the technical bar of the team.
Design, build, and maintain backend services and frontend interfaces for government customer needs.