Director - IAM Lifecycle Design and Architecture

Overview

Lead the design and modernisation of enterprise identity lifecycle capabilities across global hybrid environments, owning target-state lifecycle architecture, reusable solution patterns, lifecycle automation, access governance, and controls for human and non-human identities.

What you'll do

• Define and govern the enterprise identity lifecycle target-state architecture, roadmap, design standards, and reusable patterns across cloud, hybrid, SaaS, on-premises, custom application, and agentic ecosystems.
• Be accountable for end-to-end identity lifecycle design for employees, contingent workers, privileged users, service accounts, machine identities, non-human identities, AI agents, and digital workers, from identity creation and access fulfilment through change, review, suspension, and retirement.
• Own AI engineering delivery for IAM across agentic framework build, AI solution engineering, platform infrastructure and the data fabric pipeline.
• Drive automated Joiner-Mover-Leaver processes using authoritative HR sources, identity governance tools, directory services, workflow platforms, and application integration patterns.
• Own architecture standards for access provisioning, deprovisioning, RBAC, ABAC, entitlement management, access certifications, segregation of duties, and audit evidence generation.
• Provide technical leadership for IAM platforms, HR systems, and enterprise IAM products.
• Partner with CSO teams and risk stakeholders to translate threat models, audit findings, regulatory expectations, and control gaps into funded initiatives and engineering backlogs.
• Establish governance for privileged access, secrets lifecycle, credential rotation, least privilege, service account ownership, and machine identity risk reduction.
• Build and mentor high-performing architecture and engineering teams, promoting secure-by-design practices, agile delivery, DevSecOps ways of working, and operational excellence.

What you'll need

• 20+ years of progressive IT, security, identity, or enterprise architecture experience, including leadership responsibility for IAM lifecycle design, architecture, engineering enablement, and governance.
• Deep experience designing and operating enterprise IAM, identity lifecycle management and IGA capabilities across large-scale regulated environments.
• Hands-on architecture exposure to IAM platforms, secrets management, HR source integration, and custom IAM solutions.
• Strong architecture and implementation experience across identity standards and modern technology stacks, including SAML, OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SCIM, LDAP, Kerberos, federation, SSO, REST APIs, GraphQL, Next.js, hybrid identity patterns, agentic implementations, Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol, and Microsoft Agent 365 (A365), with the ability to translate these technologies into secure, reusable identity lifecycle integration patterns.
• Demonstrable design experience with LLM orchestration, agentic systems, RAG patterns or API security for AI services.
• Experience creating access governance models, lifecycle automation, access certification workflows, privileged access controls, SoD controls, and audit-ready compliance evidence.
• Proven ability to influence executive stakeholders, advise CSO-level leadership, manage large global teams, and convert risk priorities into pragmatic engineering execution.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science engineering, Information Security, or a related discipline.

Nice to have

• Experience designing IAM solutions with SailPoint, Saviynt or a comparable platform.
• Architecture framework experience such as TOGAF or SABSA.
• Experience with cloud identity architecture across Azure, AWS or GCP.
• Familiarity with governance frameworks for agentic AI.
• Relevant certification such as CISSP, CISSP-ISSAP, SailPoint or Saviynt certification, TOGAF.
• Experience in pharmaceutical, life sciences or another highly regulated industry.