Head of Enterprise Identity & Access (Remote-Eligible)

Synchrony; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 155,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Synchrony is seeking a VP of Authentication Services to lead the Identity and Access Management program, owning workforce and B2B identity perimeters, and architecting, scaling, and operating high-throughput SSO and MFA pipelines. This role drives zero-trust strategy across mission-critical apps and requires deep technical leadership with a hands-on approach to secure authentication at scale.

You will manage a 24/7 engineering team, partner with stakeholders to translate security requirements

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a technical STEM discipline.
• Alternative education path with 15+ years enterprise IT engineering experience.
• Minimum 10 years of total enterprise IT engineering experience.
• Minimum 5 years hands-on Okta Identity Cloud design, scaling, and operation.
• Minimum 5 years of leadership of distributed, cross-functional engineering teams.
• Expert-level mastery of identity protocols including SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), WS-Fed, and SCIM provisioning.

Responsibilities

• Own workforce authentication strategy and drive security and user experience decisions.
• Stay ahead of trends; propose strategies to enhance authentication security and UX.
• Direct product management and roadmaps for core authentication tech (Okta, FIDO2/WebAuthn).
• Collaborate with senior leaders to build data-driven business cases for high-value initiatives.
• Architect secure production-grade authentication patterns and zero-trust references.
• Lead 24/7 engineering and operations to ensure high availability and incident response.
• Oversee application authentication integrations and maintain underlying infrastructure knowledge.
• Enforce authentication policies, compliance, and risk metrics with cost/ROI awareness.
• Advise cross-functional teams on product capabilities of authentication services.
• Develop value-driven relationships through needs analysis, program management, and support.
• Actively champion authentication services across the enterprise.

Skills

Leadership

Strategy

Cross-functional

Security mindset

Communication

Travel ready

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering or STEM

High School Diploma / GED + 15+ years IT experience

Tools

Okta Identity Cloud

YubiKeys

WebAuthn / FIDO2

Mighty ID Authentication Services

Jira

Job description

Synchrony is seeking a VP of Authentication Services to lead the Identity and Access Management program, owning workforce and B2B identity perimeters, and architecting, scaling, and operating high-throughput SSO and MFA pipelines. This role drives zero-trust strategy across mission-critical apps and requires deep technical leadership with a hands-on approach to secure authentication at scale.

You will manage a 24/7 engineering team, partner with stakeholders to translate security requirements