Senior Backend Engineer - Okta Personal
Toronto, Ontario, CanadaFull-TimeSeniorBackend
The Okta Personal Team
- The Okta Personal team is building the future of digital identity. The way we prove our identity online is undergoing a fundamental shift, moving from scanning physical documents to using secure, portable digital credentials. In a world with AI-driven fraud, one-time verification is no longer enough; the industry needs a reusable, tamper-proof way to prove identity at scale.
- To address this massive need, our focus is on building a Verifiable Digital Credentials (VDCs) platform to power this new ecosystem. VDCs are reusable digital records that prove identity, qualifications, or skills instantly, giving holders control to share only what's necessary. We are responsible for the infrastructure, user-facing features, and business of verifying, issuing, and holding VDCs for enterprise customers.
- We are a small team of engineers, product managers, and designers who are bringing Okta’s expertise in identity to define the future of VDCs, focusing on open standards and interoperability.
What you’ll be doing
- Lead the design and implementation of a greenfield VDC identity ecosystem from the ground up, prioritizing open standards and interoperability.
- Drive technical execution in a high-ambiguity environment, balancing rapid feature delivery with long-term architectural scalability and integrity.
- Establish and enforce high programming standards, including rigorous code reviews and comprehensive unit/functional testing to ensure the platform is tamper-proof.
- Proactively own backend feature development (Java/Node.js) to integration layers, collaborating with Design and Product for a seamless user experience.
- Build and maintain cloud-based infrastructure capable of serving millions of users and thousands of enterprise customers
What you’ll bring to the role
- Solid understanding of core identity concepts (e.g., authentication, authorization) and best practices for securing sensitive user data.
- Deep expertise in building highly reliable, secure, enterprise-grade software using Java or Node.js.
- Proven experience designing scalable backend architectures and integrating complex APIs with modern web technologies.
- Proficiency in JavaScript or TypeScript, with the ability to navigate and contribute to the frontend to unblock feature development.
- High level of comfort using AI-driven development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Gemini, etc) to accelerate coding, debugging, and documentation while maintaining high-quality output.
- Experience deploying and managing services within modern cloud environments (specifically AWS, Azure, or GCP)
And extra credit if you have experience in any of the following!
- Practical knowledge of cryptography: public/private key infrastructure (PKI), digital signatures, and hashing, particularly in the context of Verifiable Credentials or DIDs.
- Hands-on experience with identity protocols such as OIDC4VP, OIDC4VCI, OAuth, and the W3C Verifiable Credentials data model.
- Experience building or maintaining publicly released SDKs used by external developers.
- Experience with Golang or other systems-level languages for high-performance service components.
- Experience in one of the following areas is preferred: developing Identity and Access Management (IAM) tooling, working with blockchain technology, or contributing to a "zero-to-one" startup-like team.
- P10423_3338831
- #LI-Hybrid
- #BB1
- Below is the annual salary range for candidates located in Canada. Your actual salary will depend on factors such as your skills, qualifications, and experience. In addition, Okta offers equity (where applicable), bonus, and benefits, including health, dental, and vision insurance, RRSP with a match, healthcare spending, telemedicine, and paid leave (including PTO and parental leave) in accordance with our applicable plans and policies. To learn more about our Total Rewards program, please visit: https://rewards.okta.com/can.
What you can look forward to as a Full-Time Okta employee!
- Amazing Benefits
- Making Social Impact
- Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community at Okta
- Okta cultivates a dynamic work environment, providing the best tools, technology and benefits to empower our employees to work productively in a setting that best and uniquely suits their needs. Each organization is unique in the degree of flexibility and mobility in which they work so that all employees are enabled to be their most creative and successful versions of themselves, regardless of where they live. Find your place at Okta today! https://www.okta.com/company/careers/.Some roles may require travel to one of our office locations for in-person onboarding.
