Okta interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Okta software engineering interview across 3 levels and 16 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Okta salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Engineer (Entry / New Grad)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks

  1. Round 0: Recruiter screen

    Phone · ~30 min

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Online assessment (4 problems, ~70 min)

    Assessment · ~70 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · CodeSignal

    Sample question: Given a binary string s, return the minimum number of bit flips needed to make it alternating (no two adjacent characters equal), e.g. "010110" -> 2.

  3. Round 2: Technical interview 1 - trees and data modelling

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Design a tree where each node can have any number of children. Given parent-child pairs, build the tree, then return all children of the node with a given value. What changes if values are not unique?

  4. Round 3: Technical interview 2 - greedy / scheduling

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: You are given a cooldown n and a string of tasks (letters A-Z). The same task must be at least n intervals apart; each interval runs one task or idles. Return the minimum number of intervals to finish all tasks. Input: n then the task string.

  5. Round 4: Cultural fit round

    Behavioral · ~40-45 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Senior Software Engineer

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~3 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks

  1. Round 0: Recruiter screen

    Phone · ~30 min

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Technical screen (live coding)

    Phone · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · CodeSignal

    Sample question: Given a rotated sorted array of distinct integers, return its minimum element in O(log n). Follow-up: what breaks if duplicates are allowed?

  3. Round 2: Onsite DSA round - union-find

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: n user accounts (0..n-1); m pairs (a,b) mean two accounts share an email and belong to one person. Print the number of distinct persons and the largest merged identity cluster. Input: n m, then m pairs.

  4. Round 3: System design - identity-flavoured HLD

    System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design cross-domain SSO for a company with apps on multiple domains: token format and lifetime, session revocation, IdP outage handling, and scaling the token-validation path to 100k requests/sec.

  5. Round 4: Managerial round

    Behavioral · ~45-60 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Staff Software Engineer

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~4-6 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-10 weeks

  1. Round 0: Stage 1: CodeSignal coding screen

    Phone · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · CodeSignal

    Sample question: In an n x m grid of 0s (open) and 1s (blocked), return the minimum number of steps from top-left to bottom-right moving in 4 directions, or -1 if unreachable.

  2. Round 1: Stage 2: System design - architecture deep-dive

    System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Walk through the architecture of the most complex system you own end-to-end: data flow, storage choices, failure handling, and the one decision you would reverse today.

  3. Round 2: Stage 2: Behavioral - experience and leadership

    Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  4. Round 3: Stage 3: Coding round with pre-configured tests

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Implement checkAccess(user, path): permissions are set on directories, inherit down the tree, and an explicit deny on a nearer ancestor overrides an inherited allow. Detect and reject cyclic mounts.

  5. Round 4: Stage 3: System design - scalability

    System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 5/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a distributed rate limiter for a multi-tenant identity API: per-tenant and per-user limits, ~1M req/s globally, low added latency, graceful degradation if the limiter's store is down.

  6. Round 5: Stage 3: Senior Director round

    Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

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Worked sample solutions (code, design diagrams, and STAR answers) for every round are available in the FAANGPlus app: open interview processes.