Staff Identity Governance and Access Engineer

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.

The Identity Governance and Access Security Team

The Identity Governance and Access Security team runs Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), and Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) for Okta itself — serving as Okta's "Customer Zero." The team owns the complete identity lifecycle for the workforce, from birthright provisioning through Workday to access certifications, privileged access management, and mover/leaver processes. What the team builds becomes the reference architecture that Okta customers deploy at scale.

The Staff Identity Security Engineer Opportunity

We're looking for a Staff Identity Security Engineer to take deep technical ownership of our Okta Identity Governance (OIG), Okta Privileged Access (OPA), and ISPM implementations. This is a senior individual-contributor role where you'll set technical direction for how the team builds on top of these platforms and raise the bar for the engineering team through review, mentorship, and documentation. You should be equally comfortable in an architecture discussion, in a live Okta Workflows debugging session, and writing the design doc that a Jira epic gets broken down from. The ideal candidate is a self-starter who thrives in an autonomous environment and actively drives "what's next" for our identity security posture — identifying process bottlenecks, designing technical solutions, and pushing initiatives from concept to production without waiting for direction.

What you'll be doing

• OIG Architecture Ownership: Own OIG architecture end-to-end — design access request workflows, entitlement/Resource Collections structures, and certification campaigns that reduce reviewer fatigue and rubber-stamping.
• Lifecycle, Birthright & RBAC Strategy: Lead lifecycle, birthright, and RBAC strategy — design and deploy automated birthright access rules, RBAC frameworks, and seamless joiner/mover/leaver (JML) processes across the enterprise.
• Workday Integration Architecture: Drive Workday integration architecture — balance scheduled reconciliation (attribute accuracy) with Real-Time Sync (immediate termination), and define the attribute sets that access rules depend on.
• Mover/Leaver Automation: Design and harden mover/leaver automation — implement attribute-driven group re-evaluation on role changes, safe decommissioning of stale access, and close gaps between automated joiner flows and historically manual processes.
• OPA, ISPM & Zero Standing Privilege: Lead OPA, ISPM, and Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) initiatives — design privileged session access, Just-In-Time (JIT) elevation, break-glass emergency access, identity security vulnerability detection, and tiering models for Tier 0/Tier 1 systems.
• PAM & ISPM Metrics: Own PAM and ISPM telemetry and KPIs — establish and track metrics around standing-privilege reduction, JIT adoption, stale access cleanup, and break-glass test success as ongoing operational measures.
• Okta Workflows Automation: Build and maintain Okta Workflows automation — streamline access requests, approvals, and remediation across IGA and PAM processes using the Okta Workflows engine.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Mentor engineers, review designs, and communicate with leadership — be the technical escalation point for the team's hardest problems, help junior engineers grow, and present clear updates, risk assessments, and roadmaps to executive stakeholders.