Staff Security Engineer, Defensive Cyber Engineering

Join Okta’s Defensive Cyber Engineering team as a Staff Engineer responsible for safeguarding Okta’s environments. You’ll work closely with the Security, Business Technology Engineering and Product teams to implement and manage security solutions and ensure that core infrastructure applications are protecting our workforce, endpoints, and corporate data. 

A strong desire to make tools and people work together to solve complex security problems is central to this role. This approach mandates an engineering-first approach: maximizing the utility of existing security tools before strategically building or buying new solutions to address any remaining security gaps. 

To execute this vision, you will combine your enterprise security expertise with your hands-on engineering skills, leveraging automation, policy-as-code, and cloud-native technologies to deliver scalable, resilient, and secure solutions. Your work will ultimately set standards for security best practices across the organization and influence the architecture of business-critical systems.

What you bring:

• Hands on experience with enterprise security tools such as Okta, Crowdstrike and Palo Alto suite covering EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response), CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker), DLP (Data Loss Prevention), MDM (Mobile Device Management), SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), and SSPM (SaaS Secure Posture Management) capabilities.
• Strong coding and scripting skills are required for building automation and custom tooling. Python experience is preferred, but proficiency in other languages (e.g., Bash, PowerShell, Go) is a plus.
• Proven track record automating security controls and workflows using a cloud-first approach
• Experience with Terraform and other infrastructure-as-code tools to orchestrate security infrastructure
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines for security automation and drift management
• Strong communication skills across technical staff, support teams, executive leadership, and external vendors.

What you’ll be doing

• Serve as a security subject matter expert (SME) for solution engineering, architecture reviews, security assessment, and vulnerability mitigation
• Lead technical efforts evaluating, designing, and implementing new enterprise security systems and feature enhancements
• Build, maintain, and enhance custom automation and cloud infrastructure using Terraform or similar tools to support team workflows and the enforcement of security controls
• Develop integrations with APIs, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), and security infrastructure to improve detection, response, and remediation
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to tackle global technology and security challenges
• Write and maintain scripts and automation to streamline security operations, with an emphasis on Python-based solutions
• Establish monitoring and alerting for security posture, misconfigurations, and threats across endpoints, SaaS, and cloud workloads
• Proactively identify and remediate security gaps; stay updated on emerging threats, solutions, and tooling across the industry

And extra credit if you have experience in any of the following!

• Working with advanced identity management technologies (MFA, SAML, OAuth, OIDC, WebAuthn)
• Deep understanding of Okta's ecosystem, including advanced configuration and integrations
• Experience with continuous compliance solutions (e.g., policy-as-code, automated evidence gathering)

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