Chief Authentication Architect & IAM Leader

New York Life; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 148,000 - 211,000; Full time

Job summary

New York Life is seeking the Head of Authentication Engineering within TDAV to own the end-to-end enterprise authentication strategy, including federation, SSO, and passwordless methods. You will personally manage a team of authentication engineers, guide design decisions, and collaborate with governance forums to ensure security, reliability, and user-centric identity experiences.

The role demands deep expertise in PKI, mTLS, and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), plus strong leadership to drive

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Cybersecurity, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years in identity and access management, security engineering, or platform engineering with leadership in authentication.
• 5+ years as a direct people manager of engineers with coaching and performance management responsibilities.
• Expert level knowledge of SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, federation, SSO, MFA, session security, and token lifecycle management.

Responsibilities

• Own the enterprise authentication strategy, target architecture, roadmap, and standards across workforce, application, API, cloud, and hybrid environments.
• Lead design authority for authentication, federation, authorization, session security, and identity assurance; drive passkeys and continuous verification.
• Deliver phishing-resistant passwordless authentication at scale; implement adaptive, risk-based, and continuous authentication models.
• Architect enterprise federation and SSO using SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect; design secure API authorization patterns.

Skills

IAM leadership

Security engineering

People management

SAML/OIDC

PKI/mTLS

Cloud platforms

Executive communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/IS/Engineering

Tools

PingFederate

PingAccess

PingOne

Job description

New York Life is seeking the Head of Authentication Engineering within TDAV to own the end-to-end enterprise authentication strategy, including federation, SSO, and passwordless methods. You will personally manage a team of authentication engineers, guide design decisions, and collaborate with governance forums to ensure security, reliability, and user-centric identity experiences.

The role demands deep expertise in PKI, mTLS, and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), plus strong leadership to drive