Identity is the key to unlocking the potential of AI. Okta secures AI by building the trusted neutral infrastructure that enables organizations to safely embrace this new era. This work requires a relentless drive to solve complex challenges with real-world stakes. We are looking for builders and owners who operate with speed and urgency and execute with excellence.
This is an opportunity to do career-defining work. Were all in on this mission. If you are too lets talk.
Okta is The Worlds Identity Company. We free everyone to safely use any technologyanywhere on any device or app. Our Workforce and Customer Identity Clouds enable secure yet flexible access authentication and automation that transforms how people move through the digital world putting Identity at the heart of business security and growth.
At Okta we celebrate a variety of perspectives and experiences. We are not looking for someone who checks every single box - were looking for lifelong learners and people who can make us better with their unique experiences.
Join our team! Were building a world where Identity belongs to you.
The Role
We seek a knowledgeable and research-focused Security Engineer to join a new Advanced Threat Protection team within Auth0 Customer Identity. This role does two things at once: it researches how attackers will use AI against identity systems and it researches and builds how we use AI to defend our products our infrastructure and most importantly our customers tenants.
This role is a key member of the Security team embedded within the Customer Identity product unit and works across multiple functions to get ahead of emerging AI threats supporting the growth of our global Customer Identity business.
We are an engineering-focused team that seeks to stay on the cutting edge of security technology and the threat this role you wont just assess our current AI security offering youll research what we should be protecting customers from one to two years ahead turn that research into concrete protections and help put AI-assisted defenses into the hands of the teams and customers who protect their tenants.
In this role you will work as part of a globally distributed team of talented engineers who share a passion for security and enjoy solving complex problems at scale. This role works closely with and alongside the members of the broader Okta Security team in support of Oktas company-wide security strategy and Oktas Secure Identity Commitment.
This is a level-agnostic description; scope autonomy and leadership expectations scale with level (Senior through Staff).
Responsibilities:
- Research and lead how we can use AI to protect customer tenants both proactively (hardening posture before an attack)
and during active incidents (accelerating detection triage and response)
- Research and build protections against novel AI attacks that Auth0 and Auth0s customers can be subjected to adversarial ML prompt injection abuse of agentic protocols (MCP A2A UCP and emerging equivalents) model and data poisoning as they apply to identity systems and customer tenants
- Partner with the identity security teams to help customers strengthen their own tenant security posture through AI-assisted defenses
- Research the emerging AI threat landscape and translate it into a forward-looking (1224 month) view of what we need to protect ourselves and our customers from then architect recommend and build the tooling to get there
- Review and harden Auth0s AI security offering identifying gaps and recommending mitigations before theyre exploited
- Partner across a globally distributed product-aligned team of security engineers to turn research into shipped protections for customer tenants
- Establish and execute a long-term engineering and threat research roadmap for Advanced Threat Protection aligned with company-wide business and security goals.
- Own high-impact security architecture designs and decisions across Auth0 and Okta Customer Identity infrastructure to support long-term threat resilience.
- Drive cross-functional security strategies and partner across engineering product and enterprise security leadership across Okta to influence platform-wide standards and policies.
- Actively coach mentor and level up Senior (P3) engineers and team members fostering technical excellence research discipline and leadership growth.
What this position is not:
- Dedicated application security code review or compliance-focused work
- Reactive patch and vulnerability management as a primary function this role is about getting ahead of threats not chasing them
Requirements:
- You have hands-on experience with AI/ML security attacking defending or both (e.g. adversarial ML LLM/prompt-injection attacks agentic-system or model abuse) and an interest in using AI to build defenses not just to study attacks
- 8 years of experience in security engineering with a proven track record of setting technical vision driving cross-organizational initiatives and leading architectural choices in cloud/product security.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring senior-level engineers defining multi-quarter technical strategy driving architectural consensus and influencing cross-organizational security initiatives.
- You have hands-on development experience Go preferred sufficient to prototype tooling build AI-powered defenses and operationalize your research
- You have working knowledge and hands-on experience with one or more of the following:
- AWS and/or Azure security
- Kubernetes
- You have strong knowledge of OWASP (including the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications) and secure coding best practices
- You have a strong foundation in secure software development lifecycle best practices
- You have solid written and verbal communication skills with the ability to turn research into clear guidance for engineering and product teams
- You have experience working with a globally distributed and remote team
Bonus points if:
- You have published threat research CVEs or conference talks in AI/ML security or identity security
- You have built AI/ML-powered security tooling or defensive automation in a production workplace
- You have working knowledge and experience with one or more of the following:
- Adversarial ML model red-teaming or AI safety research
- The AI agent / MCP ecosystem and its security implications
- Identity and access management
- Full-stack engineering
- Site reliability engineering
- Vulnerability and threat management
- Governance risk and compliance
#PID: P25952
#LI-Hybrid
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