Staff Software Engineer (TS/SCI)

Location: Maryland; hybrid. Employees must be on U.S. soil and must be U.S. citizens able to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance.

Annual base salary: $147,000–$202,000 USD. Additional equity, bonus, health, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), flexible spending account, and paid leave may be available.

Company

Okta provides identity security infrastructure and develops Identity Governance and Administration solutions for enterprise and government customers.

What you will do

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain backend services, frontend interfaces, and cloud and on-premises infrastructure for government customers.
• Support operations in disconnected, air-gapped, classified, and top-secret defense environments.
• Maintain security controls, audit readiness, continuous monitoring, and compliance with stringent government standards.
• Collaborate with engineering, Product, and Design teams to deliver customer outcomes and secure deployments.
• Drive improvements in CI/CD, observability, documentation, reliability, support processes, and technical debt.
• Mentor peer engineers and raise the team's technical bar.

Requirements

• U.S. citizenship and residence on U.S. soil are required. The candidate must possess an active clearance or be able to obtain and maintain a Secret, Top Secret, or SCI-level U.S. government security clearance.
• Active U.S. TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Poly is required.
• Proven Federal and DoD compliance experience, specifically FedRAMP and Impact Level 6 (IL6), is required.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience shipping enterprise cloud software.
• Hands-on coding at scale using Java, Python, or TypeScript, plus REST or gRPC APIs and UI automation with Playwright, Selenium, or an equivalent tool.
• Experience with CI/CD using CircleCI or an equivalent, Docker, Kubernetes, and a major cloud platform.
• Ability to apply AI meaningfully across the full software development lifecycle, evaluate and adopt AI tooling, establish practices, and bring a team along.
• Experience defining scalable backend architectures, integrating complex APIs with modern web technologies, and making architectural decisions with lasting organization-wide impact.
• Understanding of web authentication and authorization fundamentals and secure handling of sensitive user data.
• Deep expertise building reliable, secure, enterprise-grade software in Java or another type-safe language, with high proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript and the ability to ship robust frontend applications.

Nice to have

• Experience building, scaling, and troubleshooting infrastructure in restricted environments such as FedRAMP Medium/High, DoD Impact Levels, or air-gapped systems.
• Understanding of air-gap architectures, strict access controls, zero-trust frameworks, and data diode or secure transfer mechanisms.
• Experience with Identity Governance and Administration, including access requests, certifications, entitlement management, separation of duties, or role modeling using Okta, SailPoint, Saviynt, One Identity, Oracle, or in-house systems.
• Experience with Identity and Access Management, including SSO, SCIM provisioning, directory integration, or privileged access.
• Compliance experience with SOX, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or FedRAMP, including audit evidence validation.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work with an in-person onboarding experience.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k), flexible spending account, and paid leave including PTO and parental leave.
• Potential equity and bonus according to applicable plans and policies.
• Opportunities for talent development, community connection, and social impact.
• Work within a global community spanning more than 20 offices.