Principal Software Engineer

We are looking for an experienced Principal Software Engineer to work on our next-generation Imports Platform team. Imports Platform team is leading a strategic initiative to modernize Okta's identity lifecycle management capabilities by architecting and migrating from a legacy monolithic system to a highly scalable, distributed microservices platform. This critical service orchestrates the importing, syncing, and provisioning of identities and access policies—users, groups, roles, entitlements—from external directory services including Active Directory, Office 365, and LDAP-based systems.

As a Principal Software Engineer on the Imports Platform team, you will be a cross-team technical leader who takes difficult, ambiguously defined problems and drives them from ideation through production impact without oversight. You will own projects from zero to landing—defining scope, planning execution, making architectural decisions, and articulating measurable impact across the group. You will generate novel solutions to complex distributed systems challenges, guide the team's technical direction, and get stakeholder buy-in on architectural strategy spanning multiple teams.

Your sphere of influence extends beyond the Imports Platform team to adjacent teams within the group and cross-functional partners in Product, Design, and SRE. You will participate in group-level strategy, break down strategic initiatives into actionable technical milestones, and drive cross-team operational excellence. You'll tackle challenges including massive-scale batch processing, real-time synchronization, user matching algorithms, and identity resolution serving thousands of enterprise customers.

This role requires exceptional technical depth, strategic thinking, and the ability to independently navigate ambiguity while balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform health. You will improve engineering culture, mentor staff and senior engineers, self-direct cross-functional collaborations, and help shape the future of Okta's Imports platform and identity lifecycle management capabilities.

This is a hybrid position requiring a blend of remote and in-office collaboration.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

Execution and Impact

- Own projects from zero to landing, including ideation, planning, scoping, design, implementation, deployment, and clear articulation of project impact

- Generate design ideas and expert solutions for ambiguous, cross-team problems, taking complete ownership from conception through production and customer impact

- Design and architect core, high-performance, scalable distributed systems with full ownership of all production aspects (scalability, reliability, monitoring, alerting, resource efficiency, automated testing, documentation, production hygiene, and support processes)

- Research, determine, and articulate multiple design options balancing short and long-term needs; use domain experience to make judgment calls when there are no obvious solutions

- Lead product delivery discussions and obtain stakeholder buy-in on technical design and architecture across group stakeholders

- Drive the migration strategy from monolithic to microservices architecture, planning and scoping the effort across multiple teams and aligning project members towards shared goals and standards

- Use spikes, proof of concepts, external research, and metrics to make informed decisions on technical direction

- Interface extensively with cross-functional teams (Architects, QA, Product, Technical Support, Documentation, UX, and SRE) through self-directed collaborations to deliver comprehensive import and sync solutions

 Operational Excellence

- Independently troubleshoot complex production incidents spanning cross-team within the group; ask the right questions to narrow scope and provide immediate and future remediation steps

- Identify systemic operational gaps and initiate cross-team improvement efforts, such as driving down common alert types across the group

- Drive improvements in observability, monitoring, alerting, and production support capabilities across the Imports Platform and adjacent services

- Perform root cause analysis on cross-team incidents and drive systemic improvements to prevent recurrence

### Engineering Craft

- Relentlessly drive the most important velocity and operations-impacting projects for the team (automation, support processes, reliability, monitoring, CI/CD) while working with engineering leadership

- Proactively identify process, service, product, and system debt across the team and adjacent areas; work with teams to prioritize and resolve them

- Conduct code reviews with focus on systems design, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and maintainability—leading by example on review quality

- Anticipate, communicate, and manage technical risks in collaboration with other teams and departments

- Use data and metrics to drive technical decisions and validate the impact of architectural changes

Leadership

- Self-direct cross-functional collaborations as required to meet project goals; demonstrate empathy across all EPD functions to shape excellent product deliverables

- Work with stakeholders (Product Owner, PM, Architect, Manager) to help convert group strategy into actionable milestones

- Participate in group strategy discussions; break down strategic initiatives into tactical execution plans

- Play an important role in decision-making and making judgment calls that benefit the entire team and group

- Lead implementation of solutions while delegating and guiding colleagues on sub-components

- Take ownership and demonstrate strong independence—projects stay on track without steering once started

- Demonstrate Okta's customer-focus culture by working with Field, CSMs, and EEP to identify patterns in recurring customer issues and socialize product improvements

Citizenship

- Consistently set aside time for mentorship, collaboration, and technical leadership; guide others in engineering culture and best practices

- Mentor staff and senior engineers on the team, helping develop the next generation of technical leaders

- Help improve engineering culture through knowledge sharing, process improvements, and raising the bar on engineering practices

- Lead by example in code reviews, focusing on broader characteristics such as reliability, performance, maintainability, and security

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

- 12+ years of software development experience building highly-reliable, mission-critical software at scale

- Deep expertise with object-oriented languages, particularly Java, with proven ability to architect large-scale distributed systems

- Expert-level knowledge of Spring Boot framework, Maven, and modern Java development practices

- Deep understanding of infrastructure-level technologies: distributed systems, caching strategies, stream processing, resilient architectures

- Solid experience with data stores including relational databases (MySQL), caching layers (Redis), and cloud storage (S3)

- Experience with one or more Directory services: Active Directory, LDAP, Office 365, Azure AD

- Strong experience with RESTful APIs, gRPC, and microservices architecture patterns

- Proven track record of working with systems at massive scale, including batch processing and real-time sync capabilities

- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) including services like SQS, S3, and multi-region architectures

- Strong understanding of distributed job processing, message queues, and event-driven architectures

- Demonstrated ability to own projects from ideation through landing without oversight, including planning, scoping, and articulating impact

- Proven track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives and influencing group-level architectural decisions

- Excellent communication skills with ability to lead delivery discussions and obtain buy-in from group stakeholders

- Strong mentorship capabilities with experience developing staff and senior engineers into technical leaders

- Customer-focused mindset with experience identifying patterns in customer issues and driving product improvements

- Strategic thinking ability to participate in group strategy and convert strategic goals into actionable technical milestones

- Demonstrated ability to generate novel solutions to ambiguous, complex problems and take full ownership from idea to production impact

- Experience anticipating, communicating, and managing technical risks across multiple teams

Nice to Haves

- Experience with Protocol Buffers (Protos) and building event-driven systems

- Experience with server-side technologies including advanced caching, asynchronous processing, multi-threading, and concurrency patterns

- Experience in Test-Driven Development (TDD) and automated testing strategies

- Deep knowledge of Identity and Access Management protocols and technologies: OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, LDAP

- Experience with Microsoft Azure management APIs, Microsoft Graph API, Office 365, or ADFS

- Experience automating and deploying large-scale production services in AWS, GCP, or similar cloud platforms

- Experience with feature flag frameworks and gradual rollout strategies for large-scale migrations

- Understanding of user matching, correlation algorithms, and identity resolution at scale

- Experience with observability platforms, creating comprehensive monitoring and alerting strategies across multiple teams

- Experience migrating monolithic applications to microservices architecture at group or organization scale

- Knowledge of data modeling for graph databases and relationship management

- Experience with incremental sync, delta detection, and change data capture patterns

- Background in building resilient systems with retry logic, circuit breakers, and failure handling

- Experience with performance optimization and capacity planning for high-throughput systems

- Track record of influencing product and engineering leadership on strategic priorities

- Experience driving cross-team operational excellence initiatives and establishing group-wide engineering standards

- Demonstrated ability to reduce systemic complexity and advocate for simple solutions to complex problems

Education and Training

B.S. Computer Science or related field

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