Head of IAM Strategy & Risk

Global Payments; Cincinnati (OH); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Global Payments is seeking a seasoned product leader to own a comprehensive IAM strategy across Workforce IAM, CIAM, and Cloud IAM. You will lead a high-performing team of product managers and identity strategists, driving measurable outcomes and secure-by-default principles in a highly regulated, global environment.

You’ll build rolling 12-18 month roadmaps, justify investments, enable AI-enabled security, and establish ROI models while ensuring PCI DSS, GDPR/CCPA, and other standards.

Job description

What you’ll own

• Lead a high-performing team of product managers and identity strategists; foster a culture of customer-centricity, measurable outcomes, and secure-by-default principles.
• Define a unified IAM product strategy spanning Workforce IAM (W-IAM), Client/Customer IAM (CIAM), and Cloud IAM (C-IAM) aligned to company objectives, risk appetites, and growth plans.
• Build a 3-year and 12-18 month rolling roadmap with clear milestones, business outcomes, and investment cases, including M&A integration paths where relevant.
• Make AI foundational to IAM: deploy ML for adaptive authentication, risk scoring, bot/human differentiation, anomalous access detection, identity threat detection and response (ITDR), and continuous authorization.
• Drive a transformational plan to reduce identity-related risk: privileged access, lateral movement, orphaned accounts, toxic combinations, exposed secrets, and shadow identities across cloud and SaaS.
• Make CIAM a growth lever: accelerate conversion with friction-right flows, passkeys/WebAuthn, identity proofing orchestration, social and federated login, step-up strategies, and account recovery that reduces abandonment.
• Establish clear ROI models, including avoided losses, operational savings, productivity gains, and revenue uplift; track and report business outcomes quarterly.
• Ensure compliance with PCI DSS, SOX, ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR/CCPA, PSD2/SCA, Open Banking, and regional data residency rules through identity controls and auditable processes.

What you’ll bring

• 12+ years in Product Management/Strategy within IAM, Security, or Payments/Financial Services; 6+ years leading managers and senior PMs.
• Deep expertise in IAM domains: CIAM at scale, Workforce IAM and PAM, and Cloud IAM across hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP), including multi-cloud patterns.
• Proven track record delivering large-scale identity platforms (hundreds of thousands of identities and/or enterprise workforce at global scale), with measurable impact on risk, conversion, and cost.
• Experience with fraud/risk systems, device intelligence, behavioral analytics, bot management, and ITDR.
• Practical experience applying AI/ML to security or identity problems, including governance and responsible AI.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks: PCI DSS, SOX, ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR/CCPA, PSD2/SCA, Open Banking, and data residency requirements.
• Strong financial acumen with demonstrated ROI modeling and portfolio prioritization; adept at translating technical choices into business outcomes.
• Excellent leadership, stakeholder management, and communication skills; able to operate in a highly regulated, global, cross-functional environment.
• It’s a bonus if you have CIAM/W-IAM/PAM platforms (e.g., ForgeRock, Okta/Auth0, Microsoft Entra, Ping, CyberArk, BeyondTrust), API gateways, and service meshes. Risk and fraud platforms, device intelligence, bot management, data lakes, and feature flagging/experimentation. Authorization policy engines (OPA/Rego, Cedar), secrets managers (e.g., AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault), and identity data pipelines.
• Certifications for Identity Management such as: CISSP, CISM, IAM, CISPP.

About the team

Our inclusive and global teams win together every day. We’re proud to have the best minds in the industry, who you can learn from as you grow your career. The people, the energy, the connections – it’s unmatched. Come and be part of an ever-evolving company and get dynamic opportunities that go beyond borders.

What makes a Globalpayer?

Globalpayers think like a client, act like an owner and win as one team. We’re curious and innovative – always finding better ways to deliver impact. We empower each other to make decisions, and it’s our passion that drives excellence in everything we set out to do.

EEOC Statement

Global Payments is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, genetic information, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other protected characteristics.

The EEO is the Law poster is available here.

If you are made a conditional offer of employment and will be working in the United States, you will be required to undergo a drug test.

Reasonable accommodations will be provided for individuals with qualified disabilities both during the hiring process, as well as to allow the individual to perform the essential functions of the job, if hired.

Those applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application and/or interview process should notify [e-mail].

Global Payments and Worldpay recently joined forces, and we’re currently operating across two Workday application systems.

At Global Payments (NYSE : GPN), we empower simple, fast, secure payments for everyone. And to do that, we’ve built a complete, worldwide commerce ecosystem that delivers software and services at scale to millions of companies around the world—from ambitious startups to global enterprises. Our team of 27,000 experts is dedicated to your success.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, we're a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 with worldwide reach spanning North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Wherever you are—or wherever you want to be—we’re there, ready to support you. For more information, visit company.globalpayments.com and follow Global Payments on X, LinkedIn and Facebook.