Staff Adversarial Engineer

Staff Adversarial Engineer

The Okta Security team’s mission is to strengthen Okta’s position as the leading Identity-as-a-Service solution through identifying and resolving risks to our employees, products, and most importantly, our customers. With the ever-increasing pace of cloud application adoption, companies are struggling to find ways to accurately assess risk and act at the speed of their business.

In addition to driving security in our Corporate environment and the Okta service, the Security team is deeply entrenched in the Okta business. As such, we contribute to product roadmaps, branding, research and other strategic aspects of our operations. We work across multiple functions, business partners and the research community. We are an engineering-focused team that seeks to stay on the cutting edge of security technology and the threat landscape.

The Role

The Adversarial Engineering and Operations team is integral to Cyber Defense’s intelligence-led strategy to safeguard Okta’s infrastructure, products and customers. We specialize in planning and executing adversarial operations alongside Defensive Cyber Operations, simulating sophisticated threat actors and scenarios to provide critical insights into Cyber Defense’s ability to detect and respond to threats.

We’re seeking a highly skilled operator to join our global team. In this role, you’ll be responsible for planning, executing, and delivering adversarial operations and research engagements. You’ll work directly with Defensive Cyber Operations to simulate realistic threat scenarios, analyze security gaps, and uncover areas where we can strengthen our detection and response capabilities.

This is not a penetration testing or traditional red team role. While you may identify vulnerabilities or weaknesses in our infrastructure, the primary purpose of this role is to provide actionable insights and enhance our overall ability to detect and respond to sophisticated threats.

Core Responsibilities: 

• Collaborate Across Cyber Defense: Work closely with various teams within Cyber Defense, including Defensive Cyber Operations, to simulate real-world threat scenarios.
• Simulate and Document Attacker Behavior: Replicate sophisticated adversary tactics to enhance threat detection and response strategies, ensuring real-world scenarios are accurately represented.
• Conduct Adversarial Research: Perform in-depth research on Okta’s products and platforms from an adversarial perspective to identify potential avenues of exploitation, abuse, and overlooked attack vectors.
• Provide Actionable Insights: Translate adversarial operations and research into actionable recommendations that empower teams to implement proactive detection strategies and improve incident response workflows.
• Partner Across Teams: Collaborate with the broader security and engineering teams to share findings, highlight security gaps, and drive improvements.
• Document and Present Findings: Clearly document research, adversarial operations, and results, presenting actionable insights to stakeholders at all levels.
• Contribute to Program Development: Drive the continuous improvement of the Adversarial Engineering and Operations program by developing internal tools, methodologies, and processes that enhance our approach and capabilities.

What does it take?

You’re a team player with excellent communication skills and a deep curiosity for understanding complex systems. You know that to defend a system effectively, you must first understand how it works. You enjoy testing assumptions, uncovering hidden risks, and making your own life harder in the process.

You come from a strong offensive security background, with experience in red or purple team roles. However, you're now looking for an opportunity to work more closely with defensive teams, using your skills to help build stronger, proactive defenses. You’re well-versed in attacker techniques, and can articulate how they work and how they can be detected and investigated. You don’t just identify problems — you’re motivated to partner with others across teams to drive solutions.

You have experience working with remote teams and can remain self-motivated and focused, contributing effectively outside of a traditional office environment.

Skills and Experience

• Proven experience in cybersecurity and/or related fields, with hands-on expertise in adversary simulation, red/purple teaming, or security research.
• Proven experience simulating attacker behavior in SaaS applications, user endpoints, and cloud environments, including containerized infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of cybersecurity principles, attack techniques, and threat actor methodologies.
• Analytical mindset, with excellent problem-solving skills to uncover potential risks and improve detection and response.
• Outstanding communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across teams and geographies.
• Relevant certifications are a plus (OSCP, OSEP, OSMR, GXPN, GDAT, etc)

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