Okta is building scalable, reliable data infrastructure to support product and user behavior analytics, especially as AI capabilities expand across its products and business. As a Principal Data Engineer on the Data and Insights team, you will help define reference architecture, improve data reliability for externally reported numbers, and partner across global product teams to ensure high-quality telemetry and durable analytics foundations. This role also brings opportunities to influence standards, guide adoption, and mentor senior engineers.
Location: Washington, DC (hybrid)
Compensation: USD 197,000 - 270,600 per year
What you’ll do
- Design, build, and evolve high-scale data solutions that serve as the organization’s reference architecture and simplify data access.
- Create data quality frameworks including monitoring, anomaly detection, and alerting, with governance, lineage tracking, and change management rigor suited for externally reported numbers.
- Drive consistent data modeling patterns, naming conventions, documentation norms, and metric governance standards across the data organization.
- Lead cross-functional technical initiatives across data verticals to accelerate delivery and harden data systems.
- Operate effectively in ambiguity by making sound technical decisions that balance near-term delivery with long-term infrastructure investment.
- Champion Data Contracts by implementing data contracts and schema evolution practices to improve reliability across global product teams.
- Mentor and scale by raising the technical bar through mentoring senior engineers, leading cross-functional task forces, and promoting engineering excellence and data-driven decision making.
- Stay current with the data landscape, adopting and advocating for emerging technologies and practices to shape the team’s long-term technical direction.
What you bring
- Experience: 10+ years in data engineering, with proven senior or lead experience. Federal government compliance and security experience is highly desirable.
- Deep expertise in product behavioral data engineering, including telemetry data for product launch analysis, feature usage, retention, and other key product lifecycle metrics.
- Proven experience partnering with Product Engineering teams to support successful instrumentation for data collection.
- Expert-level experience with SQL, ETL/ELT tools including Airflow and dbt, and MPP databases including Snowflake and Redshift.
- Extensive hands-on experience with AWS services including S3, Lambda, EMR, ECR, and EKS.
- Deep experience designing and working with lakehouse architectures using Databricks, along with modern file formats including Iceberg and Delta.
Technology and tools
- SQL
- Airflow
- dbt
- Snowflake, Redshift
- Amazon S3, AWS Lambda, Amazon EMR, Amazon ECR, Amazon EKS
- Databricks
- Iceberg, Delta
About the Data and Insights opportunity
- Okta’s Data Engineering team aims to accelerate Okta’s scale and growth by building platforms used across the organization.
- With the growth of AI in Okta’s products and business, Okta’s data is increasingly critical to success.
- As a Principal Data Engineer, you will architect, build, and maintain Okta’s most critical and scalable data solutions.
- You will work closely with Product Engineering teams to ensure valuable user behavior is captured efficiently and at scale, enabling insights that drive adoption and growth.
- You will collaborate with product engineers, analytic engineers, data analysts, and data scientists to ensure data availability and integrity.
- In a principal role, you will tie engineering initiatives to product and business impact, exercise strong judgment, and influence across the organization.
Technology, Data, and Intelligence at Okta
Okta is the leading independent identity provider. The Technology, Data, and Intelligence (TDI) organization powers Okta’s global workforce, providing the technology and systems that enable employees to do their best work.
The Okta experience
- Supporting Your Well-Being
- Driving Social Impact
- Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community
Your journey begins with an immersive, in-person onboarding experience designed to accelerate your impact and connect you to the mission and team from day one.
