Staff Backend Engineer

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. Were all in on this mission. If you are too lets talk.

Were redefining Privileged Access Management (PAM) from the ground up purpose-built for Cloud SaaS Databases Containers and any virtualized environment. Our mission is to simplify and secure workforce access with seamless secure-by-default workflows that adapt dynamically to modern infrastructure. We eliminate standing privileges enforce least privilege and embed Zero Trust principles into every access workflow by default.

We are seeking a Staff Backend Engineerto serve as the core technical anchor and senior Individual Contributor (IC) for our newly established engineering pod in India. At the P4 level your primary sphere of influence will be at the team leveltaking ownership of complex ambiguous problems and defining how to solve them cleanly securely and efficiently.

In this role you will lead by example through hands-on architecture high-velocity coding and end-to-end execution. You will drive the implementation of secure database and network device connectors (routers switches firewalls) on top of our core Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP) platform. You will work closely with our local Technical Team Lead to elevate the pods engineering craft acting as a technical multiplier for mid-level developers while ensuring tight architectural alignment with our global team.

• End-to-End Ownership: Consistently design code debug test monitor and deploy performant backend services and connector plugins in Go.
• Define the How: Take well-defined product goals and ambiguous technical challenges break them down into modular technical designs and execute them with minimal oversight.
• Component Architecture: Design reliable scalable components for database scraping and network protocol management (SSH Telnet SNMP) using spikes proof-of-concepts and telemetry to back up architectural decisions.

• Guardian Support & Incident Ownership: Actively participate in global on-call rotation. Demonstrate system-level understanding to troubleshoot complex incidents perform root-cause analysis and build remediation automation.
• Drive Team Velocity: Identify tech debt streamline CI/CD pipelines improve observability/alerting and establish technical documentation to keep the team moving fast over the long term.
• Risk Management: Proactively spot technical risks dependency gaps and performance bottlenecks in your teams projects before they impact delivery.

• Technical Mentorship: Elevate the teams craft by conducting thorough constructive code reviews establishing best practices in Go and pairing with P2/P3 engineers.
• Global Collaboration: Partner with global Technical Leads to review major design proposals manage dependencies and ensure local execution matches global architecture strategy.

• 7 years of software engineering experience with 3 years spent building high-scale cloud-native backend systems.
• Proven Staff-Level (P4) Attributes: Demonstrated ability to independently own large tasks end-to-end influence technical decisions across a team and elevate the performance of surrounding engineers.
• Domain & Protocol Expertise: Experience in Privileged Access Management (PAM) Identity & Access Management (IAM) or deep networking infrastructure. Familiarity with credential management asset discovery or agentless communication patterns.
• Hands-on Go Proficiency: Strong engineering skills in Go (or deep expertise in C/Rust/Java with a proven record of mastering Go quickly).
• Distributed Systems & Networking: Hands-on experience with networking protocols (SSH Telnet TCP/IP) database security microservices and asynchronous event-driven systems.
• Cloud & Operational Toolkit: Familiarity with AWS Kubernetes Docker CI/CD automation and modern telemetry/observability tools.
• Multiplier Mindset: High empathy humility and clear communication skills with a focus on sharing knowledge soliciting feedback and driving a positive engineering culture.

• Direct experience at domain leaders in security/PAM such as CyberArk Delinea or similar IAM space companies.
• Experience working with Graph databases (e.g. ArangoDB) or policy engines (e.g. OPA).
• Contributions to open-source infrastructure projects or technical blogging.

• Language: Go
• Infra: AWS Serverless Kubernetes
• Data: Postgres (RDS) ArangoDB (NoSQL)
• DevOps: GitHub Actions Docker Terraform Helm

L1-Hybrid

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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.

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