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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Staff Software Engineer, Agent Gateway - **Company:** Okta, Inc. - **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** $194,000.0 - $267,000.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Java (Programming Language), Artificial Intelligence, Audit Trail, Software as a Service, Code Generation, Code Review, Software Design Documents, Programming Tools, Network Service, OAuth, OpenID, User-Centered Design, Okta, Large Language Models, Backend - **Published:** August 10, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=877538c901902b97 ## About the Role * Experience: 7+ years building distributed, highly available production backend systems. * Technical Depth: Hands-on experience shipping production services in Java and/or Go. * Domain Expertise: Strong grounding in OAuth 2.0, OIDC, and RFC 8693 token exchange. You should be highly comfortable reading, interpreting, and implementing spec-driven code. * Track Record: Proven success in shipping identity, authorization, or edge-of-network services at scale, including a deep understanding of the operational side (rollouts, feature flags, observability, incident response). * Agentic Fluency: Working fluency with agentic development tools (e.g., Claude Code, MCP servers, AI-assisted code review). You have concrete opinions on where they accelerate workflows and where they fall short. * Communication: A direct communication style, a talent for writing strong technical design docs, and the ability to operate seamlessly between a data plane service and a large identity control plane. Extra Credit * Experience building or operating an MCP server, an agent framework, or an LLM-facing gateway in production. * Prior work on multi-tenant SaaS platforms at Okta or an equivalent enterprise identity provider. * Active contributions to standards work in the agent identity space (MCP, OAuth, GNAP, DCR). ## Description Okta is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as a technical anchor for the Agent Gateway team. You will own critical parts of the data and control planes and drive architectural design as the MCP and agent identity specs evolve. In this role, you will work close to the metal on request routing, token exchange, credential resolution, and policy evaluation. You will work equally close to the identity control plane on config bundles, tenant fanout, and operational rollouts. You are expected to make sharp technology choices, prototype with agentic tooling, and turn rough product ideas into production-ready systems. You will have the opportunity to build and scale services used by agentic traffic, ensuring workflows are reliable and performant at an unprecedented scale. This role sits at the critical intersection of product, security, and infrastructure., * Architect and Lead: Own the end-to-end design and delivery of major gateway capabilities, from virtual MCP server aggregation to Agent-to-Agent brokered delegation, as well as on-premises deployment models. * Design for Security and Runtime: Set the standard for how the gateway handles credentials, tokens, tenant isolation, and audit logging. Every decision carries direct customer trust and compliance weight. The Gateway team sits in the path of agent runtime traffic, which is in the critical path for customers. * Move With the Protocols: Track and shape MCP, OAuth token exchange, and agent identity specifications. Feed lessons learned from production back into the specs and their reference implementations. * Ship With Agentic Tooling: Treat Claude, Claude Code, and MCP-connected agents as first-class parts of your engineering workflow. Set the pattern for how the team uses these tools across design, code generation, code review, and operations-including custom skills, subagents, and MCP servers that accelerate the entire team. * Raise the Bar: Drive code review, testing standards, incident retrospectives, and our design doc culture. Mentor engineers on the team and foster alignment across adjacent groups ## Related Videos - [Keeping applications secure by evolving OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100152-keeping-applications-secure-by-evolving-oauth-2-0-and-openid-connect) - [Building a Multi-Agent Orchestration Engine That Actually Follows the Rules](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100159-building-a-multi-agent-orchestration-engine-that-actually-follows-the-rules) - [Get started with securing your cloud-native Java microservices applications](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/123-get-started-with-securing-your-cloud-native-java-microservices-applications) - [Delay the AI Overlords: How OAuth and OpenFGA Can Keep Your AI Agents from Going Rogue](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1637-delay-the-ai-overlords-how-oauth-and-openfga-can-keep-your-ai-agents-from-going-rogue) - [Delegating the chores of authenticating users to Keycloak](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1558-delegating-the-chores-of-authenticating-users-to-keycloak) - [You don't need to write the code. You need to become a verification architect and prove it's correct](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100023-you-don-t-need-to-write-the-code-you-need-to-become-a-verification-architect-and-prove-it-s-correct) ## Related Articles - [What is Agentic Programming and Why Should Developers Care?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/625-what-is-agentic-programming-and-why-should-developers-care) - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again) - [Never delegate the understanding](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/749-never-delegate-the-understanding) - [A 5-Step Open-Source Setup for Agentic Engineering](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/738-a-5-step-open-source-setup-for-agentic-engineering) - [The Overflow: AI and Agentic Coding](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/721-the-overflow-ai-and-agentic-coding) - [Everything a Developer Needs to Know About MCP with Neo4j](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/604-everything-a-developer-needs-to-know-about-mcp-with-neo4j)