Principal Data Engineer, People Data

Okta’s People Data team is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to architect, build, and maintain scalable enterprise data capabilities for candidate and employee lifecycle information. This role leads complex cross-functional efforts to strengthen data availability, integrity, and organization-wide adoption of data modeling and governance practices.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and continuously evolve high-scale data solutions that establish reference architecture and make data access simpler across the organization.
• Create data quality frameworks, including monitoring, anomaly detection, and alerting, with governance, lineage tracking, and change management practices suited for externally reported metrics.
• Drive standardization of 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 and make 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 support reliable use across global product teams.
• Mentor and scale by raising the technical bar through guidance for senior engineers, leading cross-functional task forces, and promoting a culture of 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.

Requirements

• 10+ years in a data engineering role, including proven senior or lead-level experience. Federal government compliance and security requirements experience is highly desirable.
• Expert-level experience with SQL, ETL/ELT tools such as Airflow and dbt, and MPP databases including Snowflake and Redshift.
• Extensive hands-on experience with AWS services including S3, Lambda, EMR, ECR, and EKS.
• Strong HR data expertise, including candidate lifecycle, employee records, compensation, and organizational data, along with experience designing data models for recruiting analytics, engagement signals, and workforce planning metrics.
• Bonus: familiarity with Workday data structures.
• Experience building and maintaining batch and real-time pipelines using technologies such as Spark and Kafka.
• Deep experience with modern lakehouse and warehouse architectures (such as Databricks and Snowflake) and modern file formats including Iceberg and Delta.
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize or redesign workflows and deliver measurable impact such as efficiency gains and quality improvements.
• Proven history of hands-on collaboration with Data Science, Business, and Product teams.

Technologies

• SQL, Airflow, dbt, Snowflake, Redshift
• AWS: S3, Lambda, EMR, ECR, EKS
• Spark, Kafka
• Databricks, Iceberg, Delta

Location and Compensation

Bellevue, WA (hybrid)

Salary: USD 197,000 - 270,600 per year

Okta Experience

• Supporting Your Well-Being
• Driving Social Impact
• Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community