Okta Sales Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So I had this great phone call with the hiring manager, and then they hit me with this technical challenge. It's pretty standard for Sales Engineer gigs these days, but the scale of it was just wild. They gave me two weeks, but it honestly would have taken two weeks of full-time work to finish. My developer friends thought it was nuts how much effort was needed. Basically, I had to set up servers, hook into Okta's APIs, build a slick app, and then present it all. It was way more than just showing I knew the basics; it was building a whole working thing from start to finish. The hiring manager mentioned they usually hire people who nail the challenge, but asking someone to put in that much labor just to show they can do the job felt unreasonable.

A recruiter reached out via Linkedin and I had an initial interview with them. After passing that, I was given a worksheet where I had to set up an Okta tenant and complete some tasks. This was straightforward if you're familiar with Okta. Following that, I presented my work to three Okta employees who asked basic questions about my setup. I used Prezi for the presentation and got compliments on it. I received an offer a week later, but declined due to compensation, although the retirement benefits were great.

The interview process for the sales engineer position is very thorough. I was impressed with the technical challenges, and the level of detail expected of candidates. It told me the caliber of folks Okta was hiring was top notch! During the technical challenge portion of the interview, some of the panel would ask curve ball questions to throw you off a bit to see how you would handle the response. This is a common requirement for the sales engineering position when dealing with customers. All in all, I really enjoyed, and respected the technical and soft skill interview process that Okta put together.