Director, Platform Engineering - CIAM

Vizient, Inc.; Irving (TX); On-site; USD 135,000 - 237,000; Full time

Job summary

Vizient, Inc. is seeking a senior technical leader to design and execute the CIAM strategy across enterprise SaaS products.

You will define long-term roadmaps for authentication and authorization, build secure reusable services, and enable teams to consume identity capabilities via APIs, SDKs, and self-service patterns. You will drive modernization, champion platform adoption, and guide engineers through secure, scalable delivery while aligning with business priorities and regulatory

Qualifications

• Degree in CS/Engineering or related field with advanced degree preferred.
• 7+ years of relevant leadership experience in SaaS/enterprise tech.
• Extensive software engineering leadership in identity and access management, security, or core infra.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-year CIAM strategy and roadmap for enterprise SaaS.
• Lead modernization of authorization via frameworks: RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, policy-as-code.
• Develop scalable identity services for humans, workloads, and AI agents.
• Oversee CIAM platform architecture, security, availability, and reliability.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic planning

Platform engineering

Cloud-native

DevOps practices

Education

Bachelor's or advanced degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Azure

AWS

Kubernetes

OAuth 2.0

OIDC

SAML

Job description

When you're the best, we're the best. We instill an environment where employees feel engaged, satisfied and able to contribute their unique skills and talents while living and working as their authentic selves. We provide extensive opportunities for personal and professional development, building both employee competence and organizational capability to fuel exceptional performance through an inclusive environment both now and in the future.

Summary

In this role, you will lead the strategy, architecture, and engineering of an enterprise Customer Identity and Access Platform (CIAM) that powers secure authentication and authorization across customer-facing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products. You will define and execute a multi-year technology roadmap, build secure and scalable reusable identity and authorization services, and enable product and application teams to consume shared identity and authorization capabilities through standardized APIs, SDKs, integration patterns, and self-service solutions rather than building or managing identity capabilities independently. You will advance cloud-native and platform engineering practices, support secure access for users, workloads, and emerging AI agents, and foster engineering excellence, platform adoption, and continuous modernization across the enterprise.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the multi-year engineering strategy and roadmap for authentication and authorization platforms across enterprise SaaS solutions.
• Lead modernization of authorization capabilities through unified frameworks supporting relationship-based access control, attribute-based access control, role-based access control, and Policy-as-Code architectures.
• Develop scalable identity solutions that support human users, non-human workloads, short-lived credentials, and emerging agentic AI identities.
• Oversee architecture, design, development, deployment, and continuous improvement of CIAM platforms to ensure high availability, scalability, security, and reliability.
• Drive adoption of standardized APIs, SDKs, integration patterns, policy and entitlement services, and self-service capabilities that enable product and application teams to securely consume identity services.
• Lead, mentor, and develop engineering leaders and teams while fostering technical excellence, innovation, accountability, and continuous delivery.
• Collaborate with technology, product, security, and business teams to align identity and access capabilities with organizational priorities and client needs.
• Establish engineering standards, operational metrics, and performance indicators to improve platform stability, service quality, developer experience, and continuous improvement.
• Manage engineering budgets, operational planning, resource allocation, and roadmap prioritization to optimize delivery and cost efficiency.
• Advance AI-enabled engineering practices to improve software development, testing, code quality, operational efficiency, and delivery velocity.

Qualifications

• Relevant degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent work experience preferred; Advanced degree preferred.
• 7 or more years of relevant experience required.
• Extensive software engineering experience with progressive leadership responsibilities, including leading platform engineering, identity and access management, security engineering, or core infrastructure teams within SaaS, healthcare, or other highly regulated technology environments required.
• Demonstrated ability to define technical strategy and build alignment across engineering, product, security, business, and executive leadership required.
• Deep knowledge of authentication and identity standards, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), and SAML required.
• Experience designing and implementing fine-grained authorization models, including ReBAC, ABAC, RBAC, Zanzibar-style architectures, and Policy-as-Code frameworks such as Open Policy Agent (OPA) or Cedar required.
• Experience building reusable platform services, APIs, SDKs, integration patterns, or developer enablement capabilities for enterprise application teams required.
• Knowledge of workload identity, machine identity, secrets management, and identity solutions supporting autonomous AI agents required.
• Strong cloud-native engineering experience with Azure and AWS, Kubernetes, API design, event-driven architectures, observability, and modern software delivery practices required.
• Demonstrated success leading engineering organizations through strategic transformation, operational excellence, platform adoption, and AI-enabled software engineering practices required.

Estimated Hiring Range

At Vizient, we consider skills, experience, and organizational needs in our compensation approach. Geographic factors may adjust the range estimate and hires typically fall below the top range. Compensation decisions are tailored to individual circumstances. The current salary range for this role is $135,200.00 to $236,600.00. This position is also incentive eligible.

Vizient has a comprehensive benefits plan! Please view our benefits here: http://www.vizientinc.com/about-us/careers

Equal Opportunity Employer: Females/Minorities/Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The Company is committed to equal employment opportunity to all employees and applicants without regard to race, religion, color, gender identity, ethnicity, age, national origin, sexual orientation, disability status, veteran status or any other category protected by applicable law.