Lead Applied AI Scientist — Identity & Security

Okta; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 244,000 - 336,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k)

Job summary

Okta is seeking a Principal Applied AI Scientist to drive product ideas from 0 to 1, defining AI direction and enabling rapid experimentation. You will be the first AI/ML hire on the team, with strong ownership and minimal process, and may publish results if it benefits the project and industry.

You will join a security- and identity-focused team, working to ship production-grade AI agents and tooling while collaborating with others across auth, developer products, and security.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in ML / applied research roles.
• Led multiple 0 to 1 AI or ML projects and shipped practical ML or AI systems.
• Strong Python, ML frameworks, and software engineering skills.
• Nice to have: experience working on security related products.

Responsibilities

• Model and solve auth and security related problems using AI/ML, understanding customer challenges.
• Lead end-to-end model development; choose training vs fine-tuning approaches.
• Create and maintain evaluation and training datasets and workflows.
• Take ideas from research through prototype to product recommendations.
• Evaluate outcomes across quality, security, latency, and cost.

Skills

Python

ML frameworks

Software engineering

AI/ML leadership

Customer understanding

Tools

Python

ML frameworks

Job description

Okta is seeking a Principal Applied AI Scientist to drive product ideas from 0 to 1, defining AI direction and enabling rapid experimentation. You will be the first AI/ML hire on the team, with strong ownership and minimal process, and may publish results if it benefits the project and industry.

You will join a security- and identity-focused team, working to ship production-grade AI agents and tooling while collaborating with others across auth, developer products, and security.