Staff Security Engineer - Federal (Cybersecurity)

Location: Washington, DC area, hybrid. The role requires the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Secret or Top Secret security clearance as required by government contracts.

Salary: $161,000–$221,000 USD annual base salary. Equity, bonus, and benefits may also apply.

Company

Okta builds identity and security infrastructure that helps organizations protect users, applications, endpoints, and data.

What you will do

• Serve as a security subject matter expert in solution engineering and architecture reviews, particularly for detection, response, and enterprise security tooling.
• Evaluate, design, and implement enterprise security systems and feature enhancements.
• Build and maintain custom automation and cloud infrastructure with Terraform or similar infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Develop integrations with APIs, AWS, GCP, Azure, and security infrastructure to improve detection, response, and remediation.
• Write Python-based scripts and automations to streamline security operations.
• Establish monitoring and alerting for security posture, misconfigurations, and threats across endpoints, SaaS, and cloud workloads.

Requirements

• 8+ years of coding and scripting experience focused on security automation and custom tooling.
• Required: strong Python experience. Bash, PowerShell, or Go experience is beneficial.
• Experience developing and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines for security data lakes and integrating log sources.
• Experience building scalable, fault-tolerant security event data pipelines and automating security controls in cloud environments.
• Experience with Terraform, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and drift management.
• Must be able to obtain and maintain a U.S. Secret or Top Secret security clearance; current or previous Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI clearance is required or preferred depending on contract needs.

Nice to have

• Experience in regulated environments such as FedRAMP High, IL4, IL5, or IL6.
• Knowledge of MFA, SAML, OAuth, OIDC, or WebAuthn.
• Deep familiarity with Okta integrations and advanced configuration.
• Experience with policy-as-code, continuous compliance, and automated evidence gathering.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work environment with an in-person onboarding experience.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k), flexible spending account, PTO, and parental leave.
• Equity and bonus opportunities where applicable.
• Opportunities to support social impact, talent development, and community connection.