Staff Software Engineer

We are looking for an experienced Staff Software Engineer to work on our next-generation Imports Platform team. The Imports Platform team is leading a strategic initiative to modernize Okta's identity lifecycle management capabilities by architecting and migrating from a legacy monolithic system to a highly scalable, distributed microservices platform.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Imports Platform team, you will be a technical leader who independently owns projects end-to-end, from ideation and architectural design through implementation, deployment, and operational excellence. You will drive technical strategy, make critical architectural decisions, and influence both your immediate team and cross-team initiatives.

You will work on complex distributed systems challenges including massive-scale batch processing, real-time synchronization, and user matching algorithms that serve thousands of enterprise customers. This role requires strong technical leadership, strategic thinking, and the ability to balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health.

You will mentor senior and junior engineers, partner with Product Management on feature strategy, and help shape the future of Okta's Imports platform. This is a hybrid position requiring a blend of remote and in-office collaboration.

Responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership on major development projects, including architectural design and implementation strategy
• Independently own and deliver projects end-to-end within the team, including technical prioritization and tradeoffs
• Generate design ideas and solutions for ambiguous problems, taking complete ownership from conception through production impact
• Design and architect core, high-performance, scalable software components with full ownership of all production aspects (scalability, reliability, monitoring, alerting, resource efficiency, testing, documentation)
• Lead technical design discussions and guide the team in making architectural decisions
• Drive the migration strategy from monolithic to microservices architecture, including planning, scoping, and execution
• Interface extensively with cross-functional teams (Architects, QA, Product, Technical Support, Documentation, UX, and SRE) to deliver comprehensive import and sync solutions
• Analyze and refine requirements with Product Management, partnering on product features and helping define the 'how'
• Conduct code reviews with focus on systems design, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and maintainability
• Share knowledge widely, coordinate across teams, and manage risk and dependencies for projects
• Work with QA and SRE teams to define comprehensive testing strategies and operational excellence practices
• Independently troubleshoot complex production incidents spanning the home team, perform root cause analysis, and drive operational improvement projects
• Use data and metrics to drive technical decisions and validate the impact of architectural changes
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to senior and junior engineers on the team
• Help resolve difficult customer issues and work closely with Field teams and CSMs to identify patterns and drive product improvements
• Participate in group strategy discussions and help break down strategic initiatives into actionable technical milestones
• Proactively identify and advocate for improvements in team velocity, engineering practices, and operational processes
• Drive improvements in observability, monitoring, and production support capabilities

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• 7+ years of software development experience building highly-reliable, mission-critical software at scale
• Deep expertise with object-oriented languages, particularly Java, with proven ability to architect large-scale systems
• Expert-level knowledge of Spring Boot framework, Maven, and modern Java development practices
• Deep understanding of infrastructure-level technologies: distributed systems, caching strategies, stream processing, resilient architectures
• Solid experience with data stores including relational databases (MySQL), caching layers (Redis), and cloud storage (S3)
• Experience with one or more Directory services: Active Directory, LDAP, Office 365, Azure AD
• Strong experience with RESTful APIs, gRPC, and microservices architecture patterns
• Proven track record of working with systems at massive scale, including batch processing and real-time sync capabilities
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) including services like SQS, S3, and multi-region architectures
• Strong understanding of distributed job processing, message queues, and event-driven architectures
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical projects independently and influence cross-team initiatives
• Excellent communication skills with ability to share information widely and coordinate across teams
• Strong mentorship capabilities with experience guiding senior and junior engineers
• Customer-focused mindset with experience working with Field teams to resolve complex issues
• Strategic thinking ability to participate in and contribute to platform strategy
• Experience with operational excellence including incident management, root cause analysis, and driving systemic improvements

Nice to Haves:

• Experience with Protocol Buffers (Protos) and building event-driven systems
• Experience with server-side technologies including advanced caching, asynchronous processing, multi-threading, and concurrency patterns
• Experience in Test-Driven Development (TDD) and automated testing strategies
• Deep knowledge of Identity and Access Management protocols and technologies: OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, LDAP
• Experience with Microsoft Azure management APIs, Microsoft Graph API, Office 365, or ADFS
• Experience automating and deploying large-scale production services in AWS, GCP, or similar cloud platforms
• Experience with feature flag frameworks and gradual rollout strategies for large-scale migrations
• Understanding of user matching, correlation algorithms, and identity resolution at scale
• Experience with observability platforms, creating comprehensive monitoring and alerting strategies
• Experience migrating monolithic applications to microservices architecture
• Knowledge of data modeling for graph databases and relationship management
• Experience with incremental sync, delta detection, and change data capture patterns
• Background in building resilient systems with retry logic, circuit breakers, and failure handling
• Experience with performance optimization and capacity planning for high-throughput systems

Education and Training:

B.S. Computer Science or related field