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Okta is seeking an experienced Principal Backend Engineer to join the Onboarding and Lifecycle Management (LCM) Platform team. You will lead the design, implementation, and operational maintenance of backend services for importing, syncing, and provisioning identities and access policies (users, groups, roles, entitlements, etc.). This role combines hands-on technical leadership with strategic influence across the backend platform.
Key responsibilities include:
- Lead backend architectural design and implementation of features and microservices, prioritizing scalability, reliability, performance, and security
- Drive key technical initiatives across backend platform workstreams in collaboration with product managers, architects, and engineering sub-teams
- Design and build high-throughput, low-latency REST/gRPC APIs, asynchronous messaging pipelines, and backend infrastructure for identity lifecycle management
- Partner with Product Development, QA, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams for scoping, testing, and deploying backend services at scale
- Provide deep technical mentorship and sponsorship for Senior and Staff engineers, multiplying their impact and ensuring alignment with company strategy
- Drive engineering excellence and best practices around robust testing, observability, monitoring, and operational readiness
- Mentor Senior and Staff engineers, fostering a strong culture of technical growth and ownership
Okta is an enterprise-grade identity management platform built from the ground up in the cloud. The platform provides directory services, single sign-on, strong authentication, provisioning, workflow, and built-in reporting, running on a secure, reliable, extensively audited cloud platform.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 12+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong backend concentration
- Proven expertise in Java and modern backend frameworks (Spring Boot, Hibernate)
- Strong track record of designing, building, and operating scalable backend services and microservices in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Deep understanding of infrastructure-level technologies: caching, stream processing, resilient architectures
- Solid experience with relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and data modeling for high-scale systems
- Strong understanding of asynchronous messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ) and distributed caching solutions
- Strong grasp of computer science principles, design patterns, object-oriented design, and secure architecture
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills to work effectively across distributed teams
- B.S./B.E. in Computer Science or equivalent experience
NICE TO HAVES:
- Knowledge of Identity and Access Management (IAM) protocols and standards (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM)
- Experience with threat modeling, security engineering, and secure API design
- Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
