Staff Software Engineer - Platform App Services

Okta Okta · Enterprise · Toronto, ON · SW Eng - Infrastructure-672

Staff Software Engineer for Okta's Platform App Services team, focusing on backend systems, technical strategy, architectural leadership, complexity reduction, and operational excellence. The role involves leading the design and evolution of Golang-based, Postgres-backed distributed systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and high performance for identity solutions that secure AI and human access.

What you'd actually do

  1. Define and drive the long-term technical roadmap for Golang-based backend services, ensuring alignment with broader business objectives and platform initiatives.
  2. Lead the design and evolution of Postgres-backed distributed systems, prioritizing high performance, multi-region reliability, and complex data workflows (CDC).
  3. Identify systemic redundancies across teams; lead efforts to consolidate tools and services to simplify the developer experience and reduce organizational complexity.
  4. Set the standard for observability and operational health. You will influence the strategy for platform availability and lead initiatives to improve system resilience.
  5. Partner with Product, Infrastructure, and Security leadership to negotiate technical trade-offs and ensure the platform scales efficiently.

Skills

Required

  • Golang
  • Distributed systems design
  • Concurrency patterns
  • Performance optimization
  • Postgres
  • Schema design
  • Query optimization
  • High-volume data pipelines
  • Resilient service design
  • High-availability service design
  • Global load management
  • Consensus building
  • Technical direction influence
  • Collaboration

Nice to have

  • Microservices communication patterns
  • Service-oriented architectures
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Infrastructure as Code

What the JD emphasized

  • 8+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of leading large-scale initiatives from architectural design to production.
  • Expert proficiency in Golang and a deep understanding of distributed systems design, concurrency patterns, and performance optimization.
  • Significant experience with Postgres, including advanced schema design, query optimization at scale, and managing high-volume data pipelines.
  • Proven ability to design resilient, high-availability services that operate under heavy global load.
  • Exceptional ability to drive consensus across multiple engineering teams and influence technical direction through collaboration.