**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 an experienced Principal Software Engineer to work on our next-generation Imports Platform team. 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. This critical service orchestrates the importing, syncing, and provisioning of identities and access policies—users, groups, roles, entitlements—from external directory services including Active Directory, Office 365, and LDAP-based systems.
As a Principal Software Engineer on the Imports Platform team, you will be a cross-team technical leader who takes difficult, ambiguously defined problems and drives them from ideation through production impact without oversight. You will own projects from zero to landing—defining scope, planning execution, making architectural decisions, and articulating measurable impact across the group. You will generate novel solutions to complex distributed systems challenges, guide the team's technical direction, and get stakeholder buy-in on architectural strategy spanning multiple teams.
Your sphere of influence extends beyond the Imports Platform team to adjacent teams within the group and cross-functional partners in Product, Design, and SRE. You will participate in group-level strategy, break down strategic initiatives into actionable technical milestones, and drive cross-team operational excellence. You'll tackle challenges including massive-scale batch processing, real-time synchronization, user matching algorithms, and identity resolution serving thousands of enterprise customers.
This role requires exceptional technical depth, strategic thinking, and the ability to independently navigate ambiguity while balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform health. You will improve engineering culture, mentor staff and senior engineers, self-direct cross-functional collaborations, and help shape the future of Okta's Imports platform and identity lifecycle management capabilities.
This is a hybrid position requiring a blend of remote and in-office collaboration.
Job Duties and Responsibilities
Execution and Impact
Own projects from zero to landing, including ideation, planning, scoping, design, implementation, deployment, and clear articulation of project impact
Generate design ideas and expert solutions for ambiguous, cross-team problems, taking complete ownership from conception through production and customer impact
Design and architect core, high-performance, scalable distributed systems with full ownership of all production aspects (scalability, reliability, monitoring, alerting, resource efficiency, automated testing, documentation, production hygiene, and support processes)
Research, determine, and articulate multiple design options balancing short and long-term needs; use domain experience to make judgment calls when there are no obvious solutions
Lead product delivery discussions and obtain stakeholder buy-in on technical design and architecture across group stakeholders
Drive the migration strategy from monolithic to microservices architecture, planning and scoping the effort across multiple teams and aligning project members towards shared goals and standards
Use spikes, proof of concepts, external research, and metrics to make informed decisions on technical direction
Interface extensively with cross-functional teams (Architects, QA, Product, Technical Support, Documentation, UX, and SRE) through self-directed collaborations to deliver comprehensive import and sync solutions
Operational Excellence
Independently troubleshoot complex production incidents spanning cross-team within the group; ask the right questions to narrow scope and provide immediate and future remediation steps
Identify systemic operational gaps and initiate cross-team improvement efforts, such as driving down common alert types across the group
Drive improvements in observability, monitoring, alerting, and production support capabilities across the Imports Platform and adjacent services
Perform root cause analysis on cross-team incidents and drive systemic improvements to prevent recurrence
Engineering Craft
Relentlessly drive the most important velocity and operations-impacting projects for the team (automation, support processes, reliability, monitoring, CI/CD) while working with engineering leadership
Proactively identify process, service, product, and system debt across the team and adjacent areas; work with teams to prioritize and resolve them
Conduct code reviews with focus on systems design, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and maintainability—leading by example on review quality
Anticipate, communicate, and manage technical risks in collaboration with other teams and departments
Use data and metrics to drive technical decisions and validate the impact of architectural changes
Leadership
Self-direct cross-functional collaborations as required to meet project goals; demonstrate empathy across all EPD functions to shape excellent product deliverables
Work with stakeholders (Product Owner, PM, Architect, Manager) to help convert group strategy into actionable milestones
Participate in group strategy discussions; break down strategic initiatives into tactical execution plans
Play an important role in decision-making and making judgment calls that benefit the entire team and group
Lead implementation of solutions while delegating and guiding colleagues on sub-components
Take ownership and demonstrate strong independence—projects stay on track without steering once started
Demonstrate Okta's customer-focus culture by working with Field, CSMs, and EEP to identify patterns in recurring customer issues and socialize product improvements
Citizenship
Consistently set aside time for mentorship, collaboration, and technical leadership; guide others in engineering culture and best practices
Mentor staff and senior engineers on the team, helping develop the next generation of technical leaders
Help improve engineering culture through knowledge sharing, process improvements, and raising the bar on engineering practices
Lead by example in code reviews, focusing on broader characteristics such as reliability, performance, maintainability, and security
Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
12+ 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 distributed 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 own projects from ideation through landing without oversight, including planning, scoping, and articulating impact
Proven track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives and influencing group-level architectural decisions
Excellent communication skills with ability to lead delivery discussions and obtain buy-in from group stakeholders
Strong mentorship capabilities with experience developing staff and senior engineers into technical leaders
Customer-focused mindset with experience identifying patterns in customer issues and driving product improvements
Strategic thinking ability to participate in group strategy and convert strategic goals into actionable technical milestones
Demonstrated ability to generate novel solutions to ambiguous, complex problems and take full ownership from idea to production impact
Experience anticipating, communicating, and managing technical risks across multiple teams
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 across multiple teams
Experience migrating monolithic applications to microservices architecture at group or organization scale
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
Track record of influencing product and engineering leadership on strategic priorities
Experience driving cross-team operational excellence initiatives and establishing group-wide engineering standards
Demonstrated ability to reduce systemic complexity and advocate for simple solutions to complex problems
Education and Training
B.S. Computer Science or related field
#LI_Hybrid
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