Contractor: Senior IBM Security Verify Access (ISVA/ISAM) Engineer

LOCATION REQUIREMENT: This role is remote but candidates MUST be based in India, working India Standard Time (IST) hours. Applications from outside India will not be considered.

Employment type: Contract, full-time, paid hourly

Position Summary

We are seeking a seasoned IBM Security Verify Access / IBM Security Access Manager specialist with 10+ years of IAM experience. The candidate should be hands-on in deploying, migrating, upgrading, troubleshooting, and operating enterprise-scale ISVA/ISAM environments, including IBM Security Directory Server and modern federation standards such as SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect. The client's environment also includes IBM Verify (SaaS); familiarity here is a strong plus but not required.

Key Responsibilities

IBM Security Verify Access / ISAM Administration

• Design, install, configure, and administer ISVA/ISAM environments
• Perform setup, migration, upgrade, patching, and lifecycle management of ISAM/ISVA/ISVIA virtual appliances
• Configure and support WebSEAL, Policy Server, Runtime Components, Federation Services, Advanced Access Control, authorization policies, and reverse proxy components
• Design and operate clustered, highly available, disaster recovery-ready ISVA environments
• Manage snapshots, backups, restores, runbooks, rollback plans, and production cutover activities
• Troubleshoot complex authentication, authorization, SSO, federation, appliance, certificate, and access policy issues

Federation, SSO, and Protocol Expertise

• Design and implement enterprise SSO using SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT
• Configure IdP/SP integrations, federation partners, metadata, certificates, endpoints, bindings, signatures, encryption settings
• Develop and troubleshoot claims, assertions, scopes, token attributes, subject identifiers, relay state, ACS URLs, redirect URIs
• Analyze SAML assertions, OAuth/OIDC tokens, authorization code flows, refresh token behavior, PKCE, token validation issues
• Onboard SaaS and on-prem applications to enterprise SSO platforms; support large-scale federation migration programs

Mapping Rules and Custom Authentication Logic

• Develop, enhance, and troubleshoot ISVA mapping rules using JavaScript
• Implement attribute mapping, claims transformation, token customization, session handling, policy-driven access flows
• Integrate mapping rules with LDAP attributes, HTTP headers, REST APIs, external decision points
• Debug rule execution, exceptions, runtime behavior across SAML, OAuth, and OIDC integrations

IBM Security Directory Server / LDAP

• Install, configure, administer, troubleshoot IBM Security Directory Server
• Support schema management, indexing, replication, backup, restore, tuning, HA configuration
• Troubleshoot LDAP bind, search, replication, SSL/TLS, schema, performance issues
• Support directory migration and integration with IAM platforms

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of IAM experience with strong hands-on ISVA/ISAM administration
• ISVA/ISAM: installation, configuration, migration, upgrade, WebSEAL, Policy Server, AAC, Federation, reverse proxy, appliance operations
• Strong expertise in SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, metadata, certificates, token claims, trust configuration
• Hands-on JavaScript mapping rule development for SAML, OAuth, OIDC, attribute transformation, custom authentication logic
• IBM Security Directory Server, LDAP schema, replication, indexing, tuning, SSL/TLS
• Certificates, PKI, TLS, Linux/Unix, load balancers, DNS, networking basics, logging, monitoring, production incident handling
• Shell scripting, Python, JavaScript, REST APIs, log analysis, support automation

Preferred Qualifications

• IBM Verify (SaaS) experience — a strong plus given the client's environment, but not required
• IBM Security Identity Manager / IBM Security Verify Governance familiarity
• IBM Security Directory Integrator experience
• Azure AD / Microsoft Entra ID, AWS Cognito, or other cloud IdP integration experience
• Kubernetes or OpenShift experience
• Experience leading IAM migration, modernization, consolidation, or platform upgrade initiatives
• Experience creating architecture diagrams, technical design documents, SOPs, runbooks

Key Competencies

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting mindset for high-severity production issues
• Ability to lead technical discussions with application, infrastructure, network, security, and vendor teams
• Strong documentation skills for runbooks, architecture notes, implementation plans, rollback plans, knowledge transfer material
• Clear communication for status updates, issue summaries, root cause analysis, stakeholder reporting
• End-to-end troubleshooting across ISVA/ISAM, WebSEAL, AAC, federation, mapping rules, IBM Security Directory Server, LDAP, certificates, DNS, load balancers
• Ability to analyze request flows, authentication traces, policy decisions, junction behavior, HTTP headers, cookies, session issues
• Hands-on debugging of SAML/OAuth/OIDC issues: metadata mismatch, assertion validation, signature/encryption failures, redirect URI problems, clock skew, certificate trust failures