Identity Application Architect

Duties/Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture and design of CIAM and IAM solutions supporting secure customer, partner, and workforce identity use cases across digital and enterprise environments, including authentication, authorization, federation, lifecycle automation, and secure access patterns. 

• Define reference architectures, technical standards, guardrails, and integration patterns for identity services and applications using protocols and technologies such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, LDAP, REST APIs, webhooks, and event-driven architectures. 

• Architect and guide implementation of identity-enabled applications, APIs, portals, and workflows, including customer onboarding, workforce onboarding, joiner-mover-leaver processes, access requests, delegated administration, MFA, identity proofing, registration, account recovery, consent, and progressive profiling. 

• Drive architecture decisions for identity data models, directory strategy, attribute governance, role, group, and policy design, and integrations across HR, CRM, ITSM, cloud, and other enterprise platforms. 

• Evaluate and improve identity platforms, integrations, and access patterns to reduce risk, technical debt, and operational friction while ensuring resilience, scalability, observability, auditability, privacy, and compliance by design. 

• Produce architecture diagrams, standards, roadmaps, decision records, and implementation guidance, and lead design reviews, governance activities, and stakeholder communication to align delivery with security requirements and strategic objectives. 

• Mentor engineers and administrators, collaborate with vendors and internal teams, and stay current on IAM and CIAM trends, threats, standards, and capabilities to drive continuous improvement and informed architectural recommendations. 

Education and Experience

Minimum Required 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. 

• 8+ years of progressive experience in identity and access management, application security, or enterprise architecture, including significant experience designing identity solutions in complex environments. 

• 5+ years of experience architecting or leading implementations for CIAM and/or IAM platforms, including authentication, federation, authorization, and lifecycle orchestration use cases. 

• Practical experience designing integrations across identity providers, cloud platforms, customer-facing applications, HR systems, CRM platforms, IT service management systems, and related enterprise applications. 

• Expertise in platforms and services such as Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Entra ID, AWS, Azure, Salesforce, ServiceNow, or comparable identity and business platforms. 

• Demonstrated success in leading technical design for secure APIs, identity-aware applications, and event-driven or service-based integrations. 

• Required certification in at least one relevant identity or cybersecurity discipline, such as CISSP, CCSP, IDPro, Okta Certified Administrator or Developer, Microsoft SC-300, AWS Security Specialty, or comparable credentials. 

Required Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Strong expertise in IAM and CIAM architecture, including authentication, authorization, federation, identity lifecycle management, provisioning and deprovisioning, delegated administration, and access governance concepts. 

• Deep understanding of identity standards and protocols, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, and related token, session, and federation concepts. 

• Experience designing customer identity journeys with attention to registration, login, MFA, passwordless options, account recovery, consent, profile management, and user experience. 

• Experience designing enterprise IAM patterns for role-based access, attribute-based access, entitlement management, least privilege, and segregation of duties. 

• Strong understanding of identity-related security principles, including session security, secrets protection, API security, bot and fraud considerations, logging, monitoring, threat modeling, and auditability. 

• Ability to define architecture roadmaps, target states, transition plans, and decision frameworks for identity modernization initiatives. 

• Experience working across engineering, infrastructure, security, product, and business teams to align requirements and drive implementation outcomes. 

• Ability to review solution designs and code or configuration patterns at the right level to ensure architectural alignment without owning every implementation detail. 

• Familiarity with modern software and platform engineering practices, including CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, observability, and secure development practices. 

• Demonstrated willingness and ability to adopt AI-assisted engineering tools for code generation, code review, test creation, and developer productivity, using tools such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar technologies in a secure and effective manner. 

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present architecture decisions, tradeoffs, and recommendations to technical and executive stakeholders. 

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to diagnose complex identity, integration, and access issues across distributed systems. 

• Demonstrated experience addressing emerging identity control challenges related to agentic AI, non-human identities, machine identities, and modern IAM governance patterns.