Principal Software Engineer, AI Engineering

At Okta, we're building the future of secure, enterprise-grade AI Agents. We're looking for a Principal Engineer to join our global AI Engineering team. In this role, you will be instrumental in designing and building the intelligent, user-facing experiences and the end-to-end AI solutions that power them.

This is a senior individual contributor role for a hands-on engineer who can set technical direction, mentor others, and partner closely with our cross-geo counterparts as part of one global team.

What you'll do :

• Drive the architecture and design of AI solutions, leading cross-functional initiatives across Product, Design, and Data Science.
• Design, build, and refine the core backend services that power our AI solutions, including LLM orchestration, RAG pipelines, and generative AI features.
• Build high-performance Agentic Experiences (AX) for web and mobile, engineered for streaming responses and low latency.
• Champion observability and operational excellence to ensure our AI services meet enterprise-grade standards for reliability and performance.
• Develop robust backend services to power our AI solutions, including LLM orchestration, RAG pipelines, and generative AI features
• Enable the successful delivery of key AI projects through technical leadership and hands-on execution.
• Mentor engineers, raising the bar on technical craftsmanship and solution quality across the full stack.
• Collaborate with cross-geo peers to ensure globally aligned designs, shared roadmaps, and scalable architectures.
• Partner with Security, Data, and Infrastructure teams to ensure AI adoption is secure, reliable, and enterprise-ready

What we are looking for:

• 12+ years in software engineering, with a strong emphasis on backend systems design and development (8+ years in Python preferred).
• 6+ years with modern front-end frameworks (e.g., React, Next.js, TypeScript), principles of accessibility (a11y), and an ability to collaborate effectively with Product & Design.
• Proven experience building and deploying production-grade AI applications and services.
• Experience with agentic frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph, and LangSmith is a strong plus.
• Strong background in building distributed systems, microservices, and resilient APIs (REST/GraphQL) on cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical strategy and lead architecture decisions across global teams.
• Excellent communication skills with experience working effectively across time zones and cultures.

Why Join us:

At Okta, you'll be part of a unified, cross-geo AI engineering team. You'll work on cutting-edge applied AI projects while shaping the platform foundations that make secure, scalable AI possible at enterprise scale. If you're passionate about building AI that is smarter, faster, and always secure, this is your opportunity to make an impact.

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