Staff AI Security Engineer

Okta is seeking a Staff AI Security Engineer (senior individual contributor) to strengthen the Security team’s ability to secure AI models, agentic workflows, and autonomous systems. In this hybrid role in New York, NY, you will help define the technical vision and practical architecture for enterprise AI security, with hands-on controls, scalable infrastructure, and developer-first standards.

What you’ll own

• Secure AI implementations: Design and deploy enterprise AI guardrails, gateways, and controls to protect agentic workflows from emerging threats.
• Agent hardening and sandboxing: Build security architectures for local and hosted agents to reduce risks including tool-calling abuse, prompt injection, goal misalignment, and data exfiltration.
• Define paved roads and security standards: Create secure design patterns and developer tools that enable teams to ship AI features safely and quickly.
• Threat modeling for AI workflows: Lead threat modeling and security reviews across agentic AI systems, enterprise deployments, and AI ecosystems.
• AI discovery and visibility: Develop systems to discover, inventory, and assess AI usage and data flows across the enterprise.
• Agentic platform infrastructure: Design and operate internal AI security platforms, including integrated capabilities that automate complex security operations.
• Technical leadership and mentorship: Drive alignment across product, security, and infrastructure teams while mentoring engineers and security practitioners across domains.

What you bring

• AI security expertise: Deep understanding of the AI threat landscape, including OWASP, MITRE ATLAS, and NIST AI RMF, with practical experience addressing threats such as prompt injection and excessive agency.
• Software engineering background: 8+ years of experience in security engineering or backend software development, with strong coding proficiency in Python or Go, plus hands-on cloud experience.
• Agentic framework knowledge: Experience securing or auditing agentic frameworks (for example LangChain, Strands, Claude Agent SDK, or custom tool-calling agents) in sandboxed environments.
• Architectural expertise: Proven ability to design scalable cloud infrastructure on AWS or GCP, including API gateways, proxy architectures, and access controls for enterprise systems.
• Paved road construction: Track record building developer-first security tools and platform controls that preserve engineering velocity.
• Technical leadership: Strong communication skills, including experience influencing engineering leaders and mentoring engineers.
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Security, or equivalent practical experience.

Tools and technologies

• Python, Go, AWS, GCP
• OWASP, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF
• LangChain, Strands, Claude Agent SDK

Okta experience

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

Compensation: USD 180,000 - 247,500 per year.

Location: New York, NY (hybrid).