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.
We are looking for a Senior Architect to join our Emerging Technologies organization. This is a high-leverage, hands-on engineering role designed for a technical leader who wants to stay in the code while steering the architectural direction of our most ambitious bets.
You will be a core contributor and architectural anchor for two high-priority workstreams:
Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA) | Scaling 1 to 10To build a world-class, low-latency FGA system that remains resilient under the industry’s most complex identity hierarchies. We are looking for an architect who views authorization not as a set of rules, but as a massive-scale graph computation problem that requires elegant, distributed, and mathematically rigorous solutions.
The Work:
Algorithmic Innovation: Moving beyond naive graph algorithms to implement probabilistic structures and fixpoint algorithms capable of navigating massive organizational hierarchies without computational or memory exhaustion.
Graph Resolution Heuristics: Engineering workload-aware heuristics that can intelligently prioritize and resolve graph queries based on complexity cost, maintaining low latency even when faced with high-cardinality data sets and deep nesting.
Fixpoint & Cycle Resolution: Solving for complex resolution requirements, such as circular references and recursive paths, in a horizontally scaled environment where traditional distributed patterns fail to meet our performance mandates.
Scaling the Probabilistic Logic: Designing the engine to utilize non-deterministic approaches where exact computation is too expensive, ensuring the system remains mathematically rigorous while operating at the limits of global scale.
We are pioneering the "Agentic Identity" space. This workstream is focused on building foundational products that secure AI Agents and provide developers with the tools to manage identity in an autonomous world.
The Work: Rapidly architecting and shipping 0-to-1 product offerings that define how agents interact securely.
The Goal: Establish our platform as the standard for securing the next generation of AI-driven applications.
Architectural Acceleration: Don’t just design it, build it. You will accelerate teams by writing critical-path code and providing the architectural "connective tissue" between complex systems.
Algorithmic Leadership: Apply deep expertise in graph theory and distributed systems to solve the unique scaling challenges of our FGA domain.
Technical Strategy: Partner with product leadership to define the technical roadmap for securing AI agents, ensuring our 0-to-1 bets are built on a sustainable foundation.
High-Bar Engineering: Set the standard for code quality, system design, and engineering excellence across the Emerging Tech group.
Senior Architect-Level Technical Depth: Extensive experience as a Senior Architect or Distinguished Engineer with a history of shipping complex, large-scale systems.
Hands-on Practitioner: You still love coding. You prefer to prove an architectural concept with a PR rather than a slide deck.
Domain Expertise: Strong background in Authorization/Identity and a mastery of Graph Algorithms.
Adaptability: Comfortable shifting between the rigors of scaling a "1-to-10" product and the ambiguity of a "0-to-1" AI initiative.
#LI-Hybrid
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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 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.
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Skills Required
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
- 3+ years of experience in designing and optimizing production-grade algorithms
- Deep expertise in advanced graph theory and set theory
- Experience with Go programming language
- Experience with AWS
- Knowledge of identity and access management principles
- Strong understanding of performance optimization
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
Okta Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Okta and has not been reviewed or approved by Okta.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage spans medical, dental, vision, mental-health support, and income protection, complemented by preventive care options and wellness resources. These elements indicate robust coverage for both routine needs and more complex situations.
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Parental & Family Support — Policies include paid parental leave, adoption and surrogacy assistance, and fertility and family‑building benefits. Caregiving resources and flexible arrangements help employees navigate family responsibilities.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible or unlimited PTO, separate sick time, paid holidays, and a company Wellbeing Week provide multiple avenues for time away. This breadth supports rest, recovery, and work‑life balance.
Okta Insights
What We Do
Okta is the leading independent identity provider. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time. With more than 7,000 pre-built integrations to applications and infrastructure providers, Okta provides simple and secure access to people and organizations everywhere, giving them the confidence to reach their full potential. More than 10,000 organizations, including JetBlue, Nordstrom, Siemens, Slack, T-Mobile, Takeda, Teach for America, and Twilio, trust Okta to help protect the identities of their workforces and customers.
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