Staff AI Security Engineer

Okta is seeking a Staff AI Security Engineer (senior individual contributor) to set the technical direction for AI security. This role focuses on architecture and hands-on security controls for AI models, agentic workflows, and autonomous systems, with an emphasis on scalable infrastructure, mentorship, and cross-functional partnership.

Responsibilities

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

Requirements

• Deep knowledge of the AI threat landscape, including OWASP, MITRE ATLAS, and NIST AI RMF, with practical experience addressing prompt injection, excessive agency, and other AI-related threats.
• 8+ years of experience in security engineering or backend software development, with strong coding proficiency in Python or Go and hands-on cloud experience.
• Experience securing or auditing agentic frameworks, including LangChain, Strands, Claude Agent SDK, or custom tool-calling agents, particularly in sandboxed environments.
• Demonstrated ability to design scalable cloud infrastructure on AWS/GCP, including API gateways, proxy architectures, and enterprise access controls.
• Proven ability to build developer-first security tools and platform controls that maintain engineering velocity.
• Strong communication skills, including a track record of driving technical strategy, influencing engineering leaders, and mentoring engineers.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Security, or equivalent practical experience.

Technologies

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

Okta Experience

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

Job Details

• Location: Washington, DC (hybrid)
• Salary: USD 180,000 - 247,500 per year
• Minimum Experience: 8 years