Staff Backend Engineer - Okta Identity Governance

The Briefed; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Okta is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Identity Governance (OIG) team. You will own architecture and drive the design of microservices and event-driven systems that manage access governance, entitlement workflows, and compliance auditing for enterprise customers.

You will collaborate with Product, QA, and SRE to deliver secure, scalable software used by millions of users, focusing on high availability, performance, and reliability in a backend role.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience in enterprise environments.
• Experience building large-scale distributed systems and microservices.
• Backend proficiency in Java, Kotlin, or Go.
• Expertise in event-driven architectures, APIs, high-concurrency processing, and data modeling.
• Experience with enterprise security requirements (RBAC/ABAC, audit logging).

Responsibilities

• Own architecture and feature areas end-to-end in Okta's OIG platform.
• Design and ship microservices and event-driven systems for governance and auditing.
• Collaborate with Product, QA, and SRE for production readiness and reliability.
• Diagnose and resolve production issues and performance bottlenecks.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java / Kotlin / Go

Event-driven architecture

API design

RBAC/ABAC

Multi-tenant security

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Job description

Okta secures identity for organizations worldwide, building trusted, neutral infrastructure that enables enterprise teams to safely embrace new technologies and AI capabilities.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Okta Identity Governance (OIG) team, you will take end-to-end technical ownership of key architecture and feature areas within Okta’s flagship governance platform. In this high-impact backend role, you will design, build, and scale microservices and event-driven systems that manage access governance, entitlement workflows, and compliance auditing for thousands of global enterprise customers. You will partner closely with Product, QA, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams to deliver secure, scalable, and resilient software used by millions of daily users.

Key Responsibilities

• End-to-End Technical Ownership: Lead feature areas across the OIG platform from initial technical design through implementation, testing, deployment, and post-launch operational monitoring.
• Distributed Architecture & Systems Design: Architect and ship production-ready, event-driven microservices, REST/gRPC APIs, and scalable data models with a focus on high availability, performance, and correctness.
• Engineering Quality & Standards: Write clean, well-tested, maintainable code in Java, Kotlin, or Go, holding the broader engineering team to high standards of craftsmanship and code quality.
• Cross-Functional Scoping: Partner with Product Managers, QA Engineers, and SREs to scope development tasks, mitigate technical risks, and manage production deployment pipelines.
• Technical Alignment & Influence: Drive technical consensus and architectural direction across multiple engineering teams and stakeholders without needing formal reporting authority.
• Customer Issue Resolution: Quickly diagnose and resolve complex customer-reported issues, bug reports, and performance bottlenecks in production environments.

Requirements

Experience & Technical Depth

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of independently owning and shipping complex features in enterprise production environments.
• Demonstrated experience architecting and operating large-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems and microservices.
• Strong backend programming proficiency in one or more core cloud-native/JVM languages: Java, Kotlin, or Go.
• Expertise in event-driven architecture, API design, high-concurrency processing, and large-scale data modeling.
• Direct experience designing systems that meet strict enterprise security and reliability requirements (multi-tenancy, high availability, audit logging, RBAC/ABAC).

Education & Compliance

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• U.S. Soil Requirement: Must perform all work physically located on U.S. soil (50 states, District of Columbia, or outlying areas of the U.S. per FAR 2.101). No citizenship restriction applies.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct domain experience building Identity and Access Management (IAM) or Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) platforms.
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration engines, approval routing systems, finite state machines, or BPM engines.