Staff Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia
Staff engineer jobs in District of Columbia concentrate in federal contracting, defense technology, and cloud infrastructure, with demand anchored by the region's dense network of government agencies and the private firms that support them. Most hiring centers on Washington D.C. and nearby corridors in Arlington and Bethesda, where established employers like Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos, and SAIC maintain large engineering practices. Distributed systems, platform engineering, and security architecture are the most in-demand specializations across active openings. Scan the live roles below and apply to whichever ones fit.
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Showing 5 of 28+ Staff Engineer jobs
Secure Every Identity, from AI to Human
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. We're all in on this mission. If you are too, let's talk.
Staff DevSecOps Engineer (TS/SCI)
Secure Every Identity, from AI to Human
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. We're all in on this mission. If you are too, let's talk.
The Staff DevSecOps Engineer Opportunity
We are seeking a highly skilled and hands-on Staff DevSecOps Engineer with an issue management focus to be part of Security's Vulnerability Management team. The team delivers foundational infrastructure vulnerability scanning and reporting capabilities that enable corporate engineering teams to operate securely, reliably, and at scale.
The Vulnerability Management team safeguards Okta from threats and vulnerabilities that could disrupt our business or erode our customers' trust. In this role, you will be embedded directly within our service environments, working side-by-side with engineering and operations teams to strengthen Okta's security posture across infrastructure, cloud, and business systems.
This is a tactical and strategic role; you will build centralized security posture analytics and reporting capabilities that aggregate findings, remediation status, and risk data across Okta's security tools to improve visibility, accountability, and execution. The focus is on automating issue tracking and ownership assignment, identifying and routing unowned findings, partnering with remediation teams to accelerate closure, and developing remediation solutions where none currently exist. Longer term, leverage AI to simplify security posture management, increase trust in the data, automate analysis and prioritization, and provide actionable insights that help the team proactively manage security risk at scale.
The ideal candidate combines deep technical security expertise with the ability to troubleshoot in complex environments and drive measurable improvements across the security posture management lifecycle.
What you'll be doing:
- Serve as a security subject matter expert (SME) for solution engineering and architecture reviews regarding the automation of vulnerability scanning and reporting.
- Collaborate with SRE to manage update pipelines and enforce compliance with baseline standards.
- Develop agentic automation to scale security posture scanning, reporting, issue remediation, and patch validation.
- Lead technical efforts to evaluate, design, and implement new in house developed security systems and feature enhancements.
- Build, maintain, and enhance custom automation and cloud infrastructure using Terraform or similar tools to support team or AI workflows and enforce security controls.
- Develop integrations with APIs, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), and security infrastructure to improve vulnerability detection, response, and remediation.
- Write and maintain scripts and automations, with an emphasis on Python-based solutions, to streamline security operations. Mastery in Python, Bash, or Go, alongside Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform) for automated environment provisioning and security guardrails.
- Establish monitoring and alerting for security posture, misconfigurations, and threats across endpoints, SaaS, and cloud workloads.
- Proactively identify and remediate security gaps; stay updated on emerging threats, solutions, and tooling across the industry.
What you bring:
- 10+ years of experience in Security Engineering, DevSecOps, Infrastructure Security, or SaaS apps within a large corporate environment.
- 10+ years of strong coding and scripting experience, with a focus on building automation and custom tooling for security engineering teams.
- Experience developing and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines for onboarding security data into Okta's security data lake.
- Ability to build and maintain scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines to process vulnerability data.
- Proven track record of automating security controls and workflows using a cloud-first approach.
- Experience with Terraform and other infrastructure-as-code tools to orchestrate security infrastructure.
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines for security automation and drift management.
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to collaborate with technical staff, support teams, executive leadership, and external vendors.
- 2+ years of experience building engineering solutions within highly regulated environments is a plus.
- Experience with automating commercial or open-source vulnerability and misconfiguration scanners and reporting tools regarding Infrastructure/ IP based Assets, Containers, CSPM and CNAPP. Examples: Qualys, TenableSC, Prisma Cloud, Wiz, Orca, Lacework, Paramify, Atlassian Jira, ServiceNow etc. are a plus.
- Familiarity with industry standards, frameworks and publications such as CVE, CVSS, EPSS, OWASP and CISA KEV catalog is a plus.
Additional requirements:
- U.S. soil status - the employee must be on U.S. soil, which means the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or outlying areas of the United States, as defined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 2.101, and be a U.S. person.
- U.S. person status - the employee must be either a U.S. citizen as defined in 42 U.S. Code § 9102; a natural person who is a lawful permanent resident as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20) or who is a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3); or a U.S. national (i.e. includes citizens and non-citizens born in outlying possessions such as American Samoa and Swains Island), green card holders, refugees, and asylees. Working on a U.S. visa does NOT qualify as a U.S. person.
- Security Clearance: Active U.S. TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Poly Compliance Expertise: Proven experience navigating Federal and DoD compliance frameworks, specifically FedRAMP and Impact Level 6 (IL6)
P25821_3544081
#LI-HYBRID
The Okta Experience
- Supporting Your Well-Being
- Driving Social Impact
- Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community
We are intentional about connection. Our global community, spanning over 20 offices worldwide, is united by a drive to innovate. Your journey begins with an immersive, in-person onboarding experience designed to accelerate your impact and connect you to our mission and team from day one.
Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, or status as a protected veteran. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and convictions records, consistent with applicable laws.
If reasonable accommodation is needed to complete any part of the job application, interview process, or onboarding please use this Form to request an accommodation.
Notice for New York City Applicants & Employees: Okta may use Automated Employment Decision Tools (AEDT), as defined by New York City Local Law 144, that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other automated processes to assist in our recruitment and hiring process. In accordance with NYC Local Law 144, if you are an applicant or employee residing in New York City, please click here to view our full NYC AEDT Notice.
Secure Every Identity, from AI to Human
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. We're all in on this mission. If you are too, let's talk.
Staff DevSecOps Engineer (TS/SCI)
Secure Every Identity, from AI to Human
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. We're all in on this mission. If you are too, let's talk.
The Staff DevSecOps Engineer Opportunity
We are seeking a highly skilled and hands-on Staff DevSecOps Engineer with an issue management focus to be part of Security's Vulnerability Management team. The team delivers foundational infrastructure vulnerability scanning and reporting capabilities that enable corporate engineering teams to operate securely, reliably, and at scale.
The Vulnerability Management team safeguards Okta from threats and vulnerabilities that could disrupt our business or erode our customers' trust. In this role, you will be embedded directly within our service environments, working side-by-side with engineering and operations teams to strengthen Okta's security posture across infrastructure, cloud, and business systems.
This is a tactical and strategic role; you will build centralized security posture analytics and reporting capabilities that aggregate findings, remediation status, and risk data across Okta's security tools to improve visibility, accountability, and execution. The focus is on automating issue tracking and ownership assignment, identifying and routing unowned findings, partnering with remediation teams to accelerate closure, and developing remediation solutions where none currently exist. Longer term, leverage AI to simplify security posture management, increase trust in the data, automate analysis and prioritization, and provide actionable insights that help the team proactively manage security risk at scale.
The ideal candidate combines deep technical security expertise with the ability to troubleshoot in complex environments and drive measurable improvements across the security posture management lifecycle.
What you'll be doing:
- Serve as a security subject matter expert (SME) for solution engineering and architecture reviews regarding the automation of vulnerability scanning and reporting.
- Collaborate with SRE to manage update pipelines and enforce compliance with baseline standards.
- Develop agentic automation to scale security posture scanning, reporting, issue remediation, and patch validation.
- Lead technical efforts to evaluate, design, and implement new in house developed security systems and feature enhancements.
- Build, maintain, and enhance custom automation and cloud infrastructure using Terraform or similar tools to support team or AI workflows and enforce security controls.
- Develop integrations with APIs, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), and security infrastructure to improve vulnerability detection, response, and remediation.
- Write and maintain scripts and automations, with an emphasis on Python-based solutions, to streamline security operations. Mastery in Python, Bash, or Go, alongside Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform) for automated environment provisioning and security guardrails.
- Establish monitoring and alerting for security posture, misconfigurations, and threats across endpoints, SaaS, and cloud workloads.
- Proactively identify and remediate security gaps; stay updated on emerging threats, solutions, and tooling across the industry.
What you bring:
- 10+ years of experience in Security Engineering, DevSecOps, Infrastructure Security, or SaaS apps within a large corporate environment.
- 10+ years of strong coding and scripting experience, with a focus on building automation and custom tooling for security engineering teams.
- Experience developing and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines for onboarding security data into Okta's security data lake.
- Ability to build and maintain scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines to process vulnerability data.
- Proven track record of automating security controls and workflows using a cloud-first approach.
- Experience with Terraform and other infrastructure-as-code tools to orchestrate security infrastructure.
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines for security automation and drift management.
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to collaborate with technical staff, support teams, executive leadership, and external vendors.
- 2+ years of experience building engineering solutions within highly regulated environments is a plus.
- Experience with automating commercial or open-source vulnerability and misconfiguration scanners and reporting tools regarding Infrastructure/ IP based Assets, Containers, CSPM and CNAPP. Examples: Qualys, TenableSC, Prisma Cloud, Wiz, Orca, Lacework, Paramify, Atlassian Jira, ServiceNow etc. are a plus.
- Familiarity with industry standards, frameworks and publications such as CVE, CVSS, EPSS, OWASP and CISA KEV catalog is a plus.
Additional requirements:
- U.S. soil status - the employee must be on U.S. soil, which means the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or outlying areas of the United States, as defined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 2.101, and be a U.S. person.
- U.S. person status - the employee must be either a U.S. citizen as defined in 42 U.S. Code § 9102; a natural person who is a lawful permanent resident as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20) or who is a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3); or a U.S. national (i.e. includes citizens and non-citizens born in outlying possessions such as American Samoa and Swains Island), green card holders, refugees, and asylees. Working on a U.S. visa does NOT qualify as a U.S. person.
- Security Clearance: Active U.S. TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Poly Compliance Expertise: Proven experience navigating Federal and DoD compliance frameworks, specifically FedRAMP and Impact Level 6 (IL6)
P25821_3544081
#LI-HYBRID
The Okta Experience
- Supporting Your Well-Being
- Driving Social Impact
- Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community
We are intentional about connection. Our global community, spanning over 20 offices worldwide, is united by a drive to innovate. Your journey begins with an immersive, in-person onboarding experience designed to accelerate your impact and connect you to our mission and team from day one.
Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, or status as a protected veteran. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and convictions records, consistent with applicable laws.
If reasonable accommodation is needed to complete any part of the job application, interview process, or onboarding please use this Form to request an accommodation.
Notice for New York City Applicants & Employees: Okta may use Automated Employment Decision Tools (AEDT), as defined by New York City Local Law 144, that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other automated processes to assist in our recruitment and hiring process. In accordance with NYC Local Law 144, if you are an applicant or employee residing in New York City, please click here to view our full NYC AEDT Notice.
See All 28 Staff Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia
Find roles in District of Columbia that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Staff Engineer JobsStaff Engineer Jobs by City in District of Columbia
Where District of Columbia roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Staff Engineer Job Market in District of Columbia
A snapshot from current District of Columbia openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Insurance
- Technology & Software
What District of Columbia Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in staff engineer jobs across District of Columbia.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical field
- Seven or more years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership
- Active or eligibility for a U.S. government security clearance, often Secret or Top Secret
- Hands-on expertise in distributed systems, cloud platforms, or large-scale infrastructure design
- Experience mentoring engineers and driving architecture decisions across multiple teams
- Proficiency in one or more languages such as Java, Go, Python, or C++ in production environments
Staff Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a staff engineer in District of Columbia?
Staff engineering in District of Columbia typically requires a bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, followed by several years of progressive software engineering experience. No D.C.-specific state license governs the role, but the D.C. market adds one practical requirement many other regions do not: security clearance eligibility is a firm prerequisite for a large share of openings tied to federal agencies and contractors. Building expertise in distributed systems or platform engineering strengthens your candidacy considerably.
Which companies hire staff engineers in District of Columbia?
District of Columbia staff engineer roles are posted by Shield, Okta, and CVS Health and others right now, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. The D.C. market skews heavily toward government IT contractors and defense technology firms, so many of the most active hiring organizations hold long-term federal contracts.
Which District of Columbia cities have the most staff engineer jobs?
Washington lead for staff engineer openings in District of Columbia. Washington D.C. itself is the core, driven by federal agency work and the contractors clustered around it, while Arlington and Bethesda draw significant engineering hiring because major defense and intelligence contractors have built their headquarters and delivery centers there, close to the agencies they serve.
Are there remote staff engineer jobs in District of Columbia?
Yes, and more than many engineering specialties. About 90% of staff engineer openings tied to District of Columbia are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting how much of the work is code, architecture review, and cross-team collaboration that travels well. That said, roles tied directly to classified federal programs typically require on-site presence, so cleared positions in this market lean more on-site than the national average.
How can I get hired as a staff engineer in District of Columbia with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is starting as a junior or mid-level software engineer at a D.C.-area federal contractor, since firms like Booz Allen Hamilton and Leidos run structured associate and analyst programs designed for new graduates. Roles such as systems engineer, software developer, or DevOps engineer at these organizations create a natural ladder toward staff-level titles. Earning a cloud certification, contributing to open-source infrastructure projects, or obtaining a security clearance early accelerates that progression significantly in this market.
Where can I find and apply to staff engineer jobs in District of Columbia?
You can find and apply to staff engineer jobs in District of Columbia on Migrate Mate, which lists current D.C.-area openings. Search the roles available, find the ones that match your background and interests, and apply directly to the ones that fit.
See All 28 Staff Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia
Find roles in District of Columbia that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Staff Engineer Jobs