Pardha Reddy

Chief Technology Officer, Okta Platform · Okta

Identity Security / Enterprise Software30+ years experience

Chief Technology Officer of the Okta Platform at Okta, Inc. (Nasdaq: OKTA), leading global engineering and operations with a focus on human and AI security. He was one of four strategic hires announced on 17 February 2026 into the product and technology organisation, and arrived with close to thirty years in software engineering, including chief technology officer roles at Asurion and Medallia.

Last reviewed: Sep 19, 2026

Pardha Reddy

Chief Technology Officer, Okta Platform Okta

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Pardha Reddy is Chief Technology Officer of the Okta Platform at Okta, the Nasdaq-listed identity company whose software decides who is allowed into an organisation’s systems. His title is deliberately narrower than it looks: he is the technology leader for the platform itself, inside the products and technology organisation under president Ric Smith, rather than Okta’s company-wide CTO. He leads global engineering and operations with an explicit focus on both human and AI security — a framing that reflects the central problem Okta now faces, which is that identity systems built to authenticate people are being asked to authenticate autonomous software agents acting on their behalf. He was announced in February 2026 as one of four strategic hires intended to accelerate that platform vision, arriving with close to thirty years in software engineering and chief technology officer roles at Asurion and Medallia behind him.

Career Highlights

Appointed Chief Technology Officer, Okta Platform in an announcement dated 17 February 2026, leading global engineering and operations with a focus on human and AI security.
Was one of four senior hires named in that single announcement — alongside a Chief Product Officer, a Senior Vice President of Engineering and a Vice President of Design — amounting to a rebuild of the platform leadership team rather than a single appointment.
Served as Chief Technology Officer of Asurion, the device protection and support company, where his remit spanned Product Engineering, Security and Risk, and Information Technology.
Served as Chief Technology Officer of Medallia, the experience-management software company, leading Engineering and Cloud Operations.
Was Vice President of Solution Engineering at Cloudera, the enterprise data cloud company.
Spent several years on Oracle’s A-Team, the company’s specialist architecture group.
Has close to thirty years of software engineering experience across hands-on development, engineering leadership and global client delivery, and describes his own focus as building scalable, cost-efficient generative-AI solutions that meet enterprise-grade quality and availability commitments.

Professional Journey

Reddy’s career has been built on the engineering side of enterprise software rather than on product or commercial leadership, and it has repeatedly involved being responsible for systems that must not fail. He began in software development and took a Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati, then spent several years at Oracle as part of its A-Team, the architecture group that works directly with customers on demanding deployments.

He moved to Cloudera as Vice President of Solution Engineering, working on the enterprise data cloud at a point when large organisations were attempting to turn accumulated data into self-service analytics. From there he stepped up into chief technology officer roles: first at Medallia, where he led Engineering and Cloud Operations for an experience-management platform, then at Asurion, where his remit widened considerably to cover Product Engineering, Security and Risk, and Information Technology together. That Asurion combination — building the product, securing it, and running the company’s own IT — is the closest precedent for what he now does at Okta.

Okta hired him in February 2026 as part of a coordinated push on its platform. The company announced him alongside Ely Kahn as Chief Product Officer, a former founder of AWS Security Hub and White House cybersecurity director, plus a Senior Vice President of Engineering from SentinelOne and a Vice President of Design. Reddy’s brief — global engineering and operations, human and AI security — pairs the operational responsibility with the strategic question the whole group was hired to answer.

Because the role is divisional rather than corporate, he does not appear on Okta’s published leadership page and is not a Section 16 officer, so his position is documented by the company’s newsroom announcement rather than by any SEC filing.

Education

University of Cincinnati

Master’s degree, Computer Science

Notable Achievements

Named Chief Technology Officer of the Okta Platform in February 2026, leading global engineering and operations with a focus on human and AI security.
Hired as one of four strategic additions to Okta's product and technology organisation announced in a single day, alongside a Chief Product Officer, an SVP of Engineering and a VP of Design.
Served as Chief Technology Officer of Asurion, where his remit covered Product Engineering, Security and Risk, and Information Technology.
Served as Chief Technology Officer of Medallia, leading Engineering and Cloud Operations.
Was Vice President of Solution Engineering at Cloudera, the enterprise data cloud company, and earlier spent several years on Oracle's A-Team.
Brings close to thirty years of software engineering experience spanning hands-on development, engineering leadership and global client delivery, with a stated focus on delivering generative-AI solutions at enterprise-grade quality and availability service levels.