Director, Site Reliability Engineering

Okta; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 275,000 - 378,000; Full time

Job summary

Okta Inc. is seeking a Director of Site Reliability Engineering in the San Francisco Bay Area to lead a high-caliber SRE organization across multiple products.

You will drive automation, IaC, and modern infrastructure practices to scale a mission-critical SaaS platform. You will oversee incident response, post-incident reviews, and cross-functional collaboration with global teams, while mentoring senior engineers and expanding offshore capabilities.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in site reliability, infrastructure, or production engineering roles.
• 8+ years of experience in technical leadership & people management including managing managers.
• Strong expertise in automation, observability, performance optimization, and incident response.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-cultural collaboration skills—particularly in a global matrixed setup.
• Experience building and scaling offshore SRE teams that partner with global counterparts.
• 4+ years of experience running the SRE org supporting a SaaS/Cloud service in a public Cloud (AWS preferred).
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and manage large-scale programs.
• Effective verbal, written communication and interpersonal skills.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a high-caliber SRE organization supporting Okta's production fleet.
• Partner with global engineering, product, and infrastructure leaders to deliver resilient, scalable services.
• Define and execute the SRE strategy in alignment with global reliability goals.
• Lead post-incident reviews and drive long-term corrective actions; participate in on-call rotations.
• Implement automation and observability to reduce manual toil and improve efficiency; drive IaC, Kubernetes, and AI adoption.
• Hire, mentor, and develop top SRE talent; foster a strong engineering culture focused on reliability.
• Foster collaboration across global teams and promote continuous learning.

Skills

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Incident response

Cloud experience (AWS)

Automation & observability

Communication skills

People management

Global team scaling

Education

Computer Science Degree or related degree

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Secure Every Identity, from AI to Human Identity is the key to unlocking the potential of AI. Okta secures AI by building the trusted, neutral infrastructure that enables organizations to safely embrace this new era. This work requires a relentless drive to solve complex challenges with real-world stakes. We are looking for builders and owners who operate with speed and urgency and execute with excellence. This is an opportunity to do career-defining work. We're all in on this mission. If you are too, let's talk.

Director, Site Reliability Engineering

Identity is the key to unlocking the potential of AI. Okta secures AI by building the trusted, neutral infrastructure that enables organizations to safely embrace this new era. This work requires a relentless drive to solve complex challenges with real-world stakes. We are looking for builders and owners who operate with speed and urgency and execute with excellence. This is an opportunity to do career-defining work. We're all in on this mission. If you are too, let's talk.

Okta authenticates, authorizes and provisions millions of users a day. The service is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) across multiple availability zones and geographically separated regions. The service is designed for high throughput, and 99.999 availability. We're looking for a technical leader to help us to continue to scale the service with great people and reliable, cost-effective and efficient infrastructure, processes and tooling.

As the Director of Site Reliability Engineering you will oversee the SRE organization focused on various emerging products like Workflows, PAM/ASA and Inbox.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

• Build and lead a high-caliber SRE organization supporting Okta's production fleet.
• Partner with global engineering, product, and infrastructure leaders to deliver resilient, scalable, and secure services.
• Define and execute the SRE strategy in alignment with global reliability goals.
• Lead post-incident reviews, drive root-cause analysis, and ensure long-term corrective actions. Participate in incident management, on-call rotations, and blameless RCAs.
• Implement automation and observability to reduce manual toil and improve operational efficiency. Drive adoption of modern infrastructure practices: infrastructure as code (Terraform), Kubernetes, and AI within the SRE org.
• Hire, mentor, and develop top SRE talent; build a strong engineering culture centered on reliability and innovation.
• Foster collaboration across global teams.
• Promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and process improvement.
• Maintain a deep knowledge of industry best practices, evolving trends, and technologies.
• Manage service and business expectations and prioritize resource allocation.
• Accelerate the velocity of SRE and product engineering by developing robust platforms, powerful tooling, and intuitive self-service capabilities.
• Improve SDLC processes for Cloud infrastructure as a code, including the maturity of CI/CD pipelines, change and release management.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• 15+ years of experience in site reliability, infrastructure, or production engineering roles.
• 8+ years of experience in technical leadership & people management including managing managers. Strong expertise in automation, observability, performance optimization, and incident response.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-cultural collaboration skills-particularly in a global matrixed setup.
• Experience building and scaling offshore SRE teams that partner with global counterparts.
• 4+ years of experience running the SRE org supporting a SaaS/Cloud service in a public Cloud, preferably AWS. Experience supporting a multi-Cloud environment will be a plus.
• Strong expertise in cloud-native architectures, containerization (Kubernetes), IaC (Terraform), and CI/CD pipelines.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and manage large-scale programs.
• Effective verbal, written communication and interpersonal skills.

Education and Training

Computer Science Degree or related degree or equivalent experience

Additional requirements

• There is no citizenship requirement. The Okta employee must be on US Soil, which means the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or outlying areas of the United States, as defined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 2.101

Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

The Okta Experience

• Supporting Your Well-Being
• Driving Social Impact
• Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community

We are intentional about connection. Our global community, spanning over 20 offices worldwide, is united by a drive to innovate. Your journey begins with an immersive, in-person onboarding experience designed to accelerate your impact and connect you to our mission and team from day one. Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, or status as a protected veteran. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and convictions records, consistent with applicable laws. If reasonable accommodation is needed to complete any part of the job application, interview process, or onboarding please use this Form to request an accommodation. Notice for New York City Applicants & Employees: Okta may use Automated Employment Decision Tools (AEDT), as defined by New York City Local Law 144, that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other automated processes to assist in our recruitment and hiring process. In accordance with NYC Local Law 144, if you are an applicant or employee residing in New York City, please click here to view our full NYC AEDT Notice.

By submitting an application, you agree to the retention of your personal data for consideration for a future position at Okta. More details about Okta's privacy practices can be found at: https://www.okta.com/privacy-policy.

Below is the annual base salary range for candidates located in San Francisco Bay Area. Your actual base salary will depend on factors such as your skills, qualifications, experience, and work location. In addition, Okta offers equity (where applicable), bonus, and benefits, including health, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), flexible spending account, and paid leave (including PTO and parental leave) in accordance with our applicable plans and policies. To learn more about our Total Rewards program please visit: https://rewards.okta.com/us.

The annual base salary range for this position for candidates located in the San Francisco Bay area is between: $275,000—$378,400 USD.

Below is the annual base salary range for candidates located in California (excluding San Francisco Bay Area), Colorado, Illinois, New York and Washington. Your actual base salary will depend on factors such as your skills, qualifications, experience, and work location. In addition, Okta offers equity (where applicable), bonus, and benefits, including health, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), flexible spending account, and paid leave (including PTO and parental leave) in accordance with our applicable plans and policies. To learn more about our Total Rewards program please visit: https://rewards.okta.com/us.

The annual base salary range for this position for candidates located in California (excluding San Francisco Bay Area), Colorado, Illinois, New York, and Washington is between: $246,000—$337,700 USD.