Staff Site Reliability Engineer, Security Engineering Group

As a Staff Site Reliability Engineer at Okta, you will design, build, run, and monitor the production infrastructure while focusing on security enhancements. You'll advocate for best practices, manage production incidents, troubleshoot complex issues, automate manual processes, and evolve our monitoring tools, ensuring a resilient and secure operational environment.

To qualify for the Staff Site Reliability Engineer role at Okta, candidates should have over 6 years of experience in architecting cloud infrastructure, expertise with automation and security tools like Chef and Terraform, and a strong security background. A BS in Computer Science or equivalent experience is also necessary, alongside deep knowledge of Linux systems and operational languages such as Ruby and Python.

At Okta, the Staff Site Reliability Engineer plays a pivotal role by leading initiatives to strengthen security measures within the infrastructure. This includes implementing defense-in-depth strategies, enforcing best practices, and acting as a technical Subject Matter Expert to ensure security is incorporated seamlessly into all engineering projects.

Staff Site Reliability Engineers at Okta leverage a variety of tools and technologies, including AWS services for cloud infrastructure management, CI/CD principles for continuous integration, and automation technologies such as Chef and Terraform. Familiarity with security tools like Nessus, Qualys, and configuration management is also essential.

During the interview for the Staff Site Reliability Engineer position at Okta, you can expect a combination of technical assessments to gauge your expertise, situational questions to assess your problem-solving capabilities, and discussions aimed at understanding how you can contribute to our engineering and security efforts effectively.

To approach this question, start by outlining the specific system challenges you encountered. Discuss the methodologies you employed to analyze and identify the root causes and the solutions you implemented to enhance reliability, illustrating measurable outcomes or improvements following your interventions.

When prioritizing security tasks, illustrate a framework or criteria you use to evaluate the urgency and impact of incidents. Include examples of how you balance immediate operational needs with long-term security improvements and how you ensure that both areas receive adequate attention.

Discuss your familiarity with CI/CD practices and provide examples of how you have successfully integrated security measures into the development pipeline, such as implementing automated security testing and ensuring compliance with security policies without hindering release velocity.

Outline a response plan you would implement in the event of a security breach. Highlight your immediate steps for containing the breach, the tools you would utilize for investigation and remediation, and how you would communicate with stakeholders and prevent future occurrences.

Enumerate the tools you have experience with, such as Prometheus for monitoring or Jenkins for automation. Provide insights into how you utilized these tools to enhance system observability and automate key processes, discussing any challenges you faced and how you overcame them.

Describe the principle of least privilege as ensuring that users and systems have the minimum level of access necessary to perform their functions. Discuss its importance in reducing security risks and how you enforce it in your previous roles or how you plan to do so at Okta.

Share the specific incident response frameworks or approaches you have worked with. Highlight a notable incident you've managed, detailing the steps taken from detection to analysis to resolution, and the lessons learned that improved future response efforts.

Talk about various assessment methodologies, such as penetration testing and vulnerability scanning. Include the tools you employ and how you work with development teams to remediate identified vulnerabilities to strengthen the overall security posture.

Reflect on current trends and threats in cloud security, discussing topics such as data breaches, misconfigurations, and compliance issues. Provide your insights on how organizations can stay ahead of these challenges through proactive measures.

Explain strategies you have utilized to foster a security-first mindset among engineering peers. Provide examples of training sessions, documentation creation, or collaborative efforts you’ve enacted that inspire team members to prioritize security in their architectures and workflows.