Senior Director, Identity & Access Management

IFS; Staines-upon-Thames; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

IFS is seeking an experienced IAM leader to own the strategy for the platform ecosystem, directing Authentication and Authorization for Nexus, Kairos, IFS.ai, Cloud Services, and future investments. You will balance security, scale, and a fast, developer-friendly experience while shaping platform architecture and governance.

You will run two engineering managers, partner with Product, Security, Compliance, Cloud Operations, and Customer Services, and lead a global, hybrid team to improve

Qualifications

• Proven leadership of platform teams in enterprise SaaS environments.
• Deep IAM expertise—authentication, authorization, or both.
• Experience delivering secure, scalable cloud-based platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set IAM strategy across the platform ecosystem and represent it in engineering/product strategy.
• Own platform architecture governance for AuthN/AuthZ ensuring security, scale, and compliance.
• Uphold engineering excellence, reliability, and sound decisions across teams.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

SaaS platforms

Security architecture

Cloud platforms

Cross-functional

Governance

Job description

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

Job Description

This role owns the Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategy for the IFS platform ecosystem. It leads the Authentication (AuthN) and Authorization (AuthZ) platforms that secure Nexus, Kairos, IFS.ai, Cloud Services, and future platform investments — balancing security, scale, compliance, and a straightforward experience for customers and developers.

The leader builds and runs a high-performing engineering organization through two engineering managers, and partners closely with Product, Architecture, Security, Compliance, Cloud Operations, and Customer Services to keep IAM capability ahead of the platform's needs.

Key responsibilities

Authentication

• Identity provider integration and federation
• SSO architecture and delivery
• OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect platforms
• Customer identity onboarding
• SCIM provisioning and identity lifecycle management
• User and group management
• Tenant onboarding and offboarding
• Session management and token services
• Identity governance and compliance
• Authentication observability and operational excellence
• High availability and disaster recovery for authentication services

Authorization

• Enterprise authorization platform strategy
• RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, and ACL models
• Permission management platform
• Entitlement management
• Centralized and decentralized authorization patterns
• Policy administration capabilities
• Authorization enforcement frameworks
• Row-level security capabilities
• Audit and compliance controls
• Authorization interoperability across the IFS product suite
• Developer enablement — libraries, SDKs, and templates
• Platform adoption across application teams

Leadership responsibilities

• Set the strategic direction for IAM across the platform ecosystem and represent it in the wider engineering and product strategy
• Own platform architecture governance for AuthN and AuthZ, ensuring designs meet security, scale, and compliance requirements
• Uphold engineering excellence — code quality, reliability, and sound technical decision-making across both teams
• Champion security and compliance as design constraints from the start, not afterthoughts
• Represent the IAM customer experience — secure, fast, and easy to use — in every platform decision
• Own reliability and operational excellence for AuthN and AuthZ services, including on-call and incident response posture
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices to lift team productivity
• Partner across Product, R&D, and Cloud Operations to align IAM investment with the wider platform roadmap

People responsibilities

• Lead a two-tier organization through two direct-report engineering managers — Authentication and Authorization — each running their own engineering team
• Coach and develop the engineering managers, building their capability to lead and grow their teams
• Own hiring, performance management, and career development across the IAM organization
• Shape team structure and role design to match platform scope as it grows
• Build a global, distributed team culture that works effectively across time zones
• Create clear paths for talent development and succession within the IAM leadership team

Commercial responsibilities

• Own the IAM organization's budget, including headcount planning and vendor spend
• Evaluate and select third-party identity and authorization technologies, weighing build-versus-buy trade-offs against cost, risk, and time to value
• Justify platform investment with a clear view of cost, risk reduction, and business impact
• Manage vendor relationships and contracts tied to IAM tooling and services
• Prioritize the roadmap to deliver the best return on engineering investment across AuthN and AuthZ

Qualifications

Required

• Software engineering experience, with a strong foundation in distributed systems
• Proven experience in engineering leadership roles, with direct accountability for team and platform outcomes
• Proven experience leading through managers, not only leading engineers directly
• Deep domain expertise in identity and access management — authentication, authorization, or both
• Experience building and operating SaaS or cloud platforms at enterprise scale
• A background in security architecture, with working knowledge of threat modeling and secure design principles
• Experience leading platform engineering teams that serve other engineering teams as customers
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks relevant to enterprise SaaS, such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, or GDPR
• Experience leading globally distributed teams across multiple time zones

Preferred

• Hands-on experience with a major cloud provider — Azure, AWS, or GCP
• Familiarity with Zero Trust architecture principles
• Working knowledge of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, and SCIM
• Experience with modern authorization technologies, including policy engines and ABAC/ReBAC frameworks
• Exposure to identity governance and administration (IGA) solutions
• A security certification such as CISSP or CISM, or equivalent experience

Skills and competencies

• Customer centricity — designs IAM capability around how customers and developers actually work.
• Collaboration — builds trust and alignment across Product, Architecture, Security, and Operations.
• Accountability — owns outcomes for the platform and the teams that build it.
• Courageous leadership — makes and defends hard calls on security and architecture trade-offs.
• Continuous improvement — treats reliability and process as things to keep refining, not fixed.
• Strategic thinking — connects day-to-day platform decisions to the longer-term IFS roadmap.
• Results orientation — stays focused on measurable outcomes, not activity.
• Talent development — invests in growing managers and the engineers behind them.
• Innovation mindset — stays open to new approaches in identity and authorization without chasing novelty for its own sake.

Success measures

• Enterprise-wide adoption of IAM platforms across Nexus, Kairos, IFS.ai, and Cloud Services
• Measurable reduction in security risk across authentication and authorization surfaces
• Improved developer productivity through self-service IAM capabilities, SDKs, and templates
• Faster customer and tenant onboarding and provisioning
• Increased standardization of authorization patterns across the product suite
• Improved audit and compliance readiness
• High availability and resilience of AuthN and AuthZ services, measured against agreed service-level objectives
• Improved customer satisfaction tied to identity and access experiences

Additional Information

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles, while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community, we drive innovation, strengthen connections, and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best, while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.