Principal Engineer – Identity & Access Management (IAM) Directory Services

Role Overview

We are seeking a Principal Engineer – Identity & Access Management (IAM) to serve as the technical authority and architectural owner for enterprise and customer-facing authentication, authorization, and directory services. This role underpins the availability, security, and continuity of global digital platforms and business-critical environments.

This is a deeply technical, hands-on principal role requiring architectural-level expertise across Active Directory, Entra ID (Azure AD & B2C), Oracle Unified Directory (OUD), and Linux/Unix authentication systems, operating within a complex hybrid identity ecosystem.

The role is mission critical: failures in identity architecture directly translate into widespread access disruption, security exposure, productivity loss, and compliance risk. This engineer will eliminate single points of failure, strengthen directory security posture, support M&A integrations, and ensure identity services scale securely and reliably across all regions.

Key Responsibilities

IAM & Directory Services Architecture Ownership

• Act as the principal technical owner for global IAM and directory services platforms supporting enterprise, partner, and customer-facing applications
• Define, document, and evolve end-to-end IAM architecture, including:
  • Active Directory (enterprise-scale, hybrid, multi-region)
  • Entra ID / Azure AD (including B2C and external identities)
  • Oracle Unified Directory (OUD)
  • Linux and Unix authentication and authorization integrations
• Establish reference architectures, engineering standards, and operational patterns for identity platforms
• Design for high availability, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, and regional resilience

Authentication & Authorization Reliability

• Ensure continuous availability of authentication and authorization services by proactively managing identity dependencies
• Own directory synchronization, federation, and authentication flows across hybrid environments
• Eliminate architectural and operational single points of failure
• Prevent identity issues that could result in:
  • Global user access degradation
  • Business application downtime
  • Customer- and partner-facing access disruption

Security, Zero Trust & Risk Reduction

• Make identity the primary control plane for Zero Trust initiatives
• Enforce least privilege, strong authentication, and continuous verification
• Design and implement RBAC, ABAC, and policy-based authorization models
• Strengthen directory security posture by addressing:
  • Privileged access exposure
  • Legacy protocols and weak authentication mechanisms
  • Inconsistent policy enforcement and configuration drift
• Reduce identity-based attack paths and systemic access risk

Non-Human, AI & Machine Identity Protection

• Architect and secure non-human identities, including:
  • AI agent identities
  • Robotic Process Automation (RPA) identities
  • Service accounts, workloads, APIs, and system identities
• Define lifecycle management, authentication, authorization, and rotation strategies for machine identities
• Prevent credential sprawl, over-privileged access, and unmanaged secrets
• Ensure AI and robotic identities adhere to Zero Trust, least privilege, and auditable access principles
• Integrate non-human identity controls into enterprise IAM governance and monitoring

Integration & User Experience

• Improve identity integration across:
  • Enterprise applications
  • Partner platforms
  • Customer-facing (B2C) ecosystems
• Ensure seamless, low-friction authentication experiences without compromising security
• Enable scalable access models for human and non-human identities

Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Support

• Serve as the IAM technical lead for M&A initiatives
• Assess acquired company identity architectures, directory services, and authentication models
• Design and execute secure identity integration, consolidation, or coexistence strategies
• Mitigate access risk during transitions while maintaining business continuity
• Ensure acquired environments align with enterprise IAM, Zero Trust, and security standards

Continuity, Innovation & Long-Term Strategy

• Ensure knowledge continuity and eliminate dependency on individual resources
• Define a multi-year IAM and directory services roadmap aligned with enterprise architecture and Zero Trust maturity
• Evaluate emerging identity technologies, protocols, and access models, including AI-driven identity use cases
• Mentor engineers and elevate IAM engineering maturity across the organization

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 12+ years of experience in Identity & Access Management, directory services, or security platform engineering
• Proven experience supporting global, highly available, business-critical identity systems

Technical Expertise

• Architectural-level expertise in:
  • Active Directory (enterprise and hybrid environments)
  • Entra ID / Azure AD, including B2C
  • Oracle Unified Directory (OUD)
  • Linux and Unix authentication mechanisms
• Strong understanding of:
  • Authentication and authorization flows
  • Identity federation and synchronization
  • RBAC, ABAC, and policy-driven access models
  • Zero Trust and identity-centric security architecture
• Hands-on experience with identity protocols:
  • SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), Kerberos, LDAP/LDAPS, SCIM, RADIUS, SSH key-based authentication, PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) for Linux, certificate-based authentication (X.509), and modern API-based identity integrations, etc.
• Experience with automation and integration:
  • PowerShell, Python, APIs, infrastructure-as-code preferred

Architectural & Leadership Skills

• Ability to design for availability, resilience, and failure scenarios
• Strong systems thinking and long-term technical judgment
• Proven ability to influence architecture and strategy across teams without formal authority
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, high-impact environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting customer-facing digital platforms at global scale
• Cloud IAM experience across Azure, AWS, and/or GCP
• Familiarity with identity governance, privileged access, and compliance frameworks
• Experience working with globally distributed teams, including India-based engineering support models
• Prior experience supporting identity integration during M&A activities

Why This Role Is Critical

Identity is a Tier-0 dependency. Without a resilient, well-architected IAM foundation, failures in authentication, authorization, or machine identity control quickly become enterprise-wide risk events.

This role directly protects the organization from:

• Identity-driven downtime and degraded user access
• Over-privileged or unmanaged AI, robotic, and service identities
• Increased risk during mergers, acquisitions, and integrations
• Delays or failures in Zero Trust adoption
• Compliance exposure and erosion of trust

This Principal Engineer ensures continuity, resilience, and long-term sustainabiliy of identity services—across humans, machines, and AI—that the business depends on every day.

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