Senior Authentication & SSO Strategy Lead

Pfizer; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 124,000 - 207,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) matching

Retirement contributions

Paid vacation & holidays

Parental leave

Medical benefits

Job summary

Pfizer’s Identity Security and Access Management (ISAM) organization seeks a Senior Manager of Authentication to lead strategy, architecture, and operations for enterprise authentication across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments.

You will oversee SSO, MFA, identity federation, and token-based security while collaborating with Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Cloud Engineering, and business stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable solutions and reduce risk.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant discipline.
• 6+ years of identity and access management, with at least 4 years focused on Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions.
• Strong background in IT security, authentication protocols, and IAM frameworks supporting SSO with >50,000 users.
• Deep understanding of SSO technologies (SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect) and identity federation, MFA, and cloud-based IAM.
• Knowledge of identity providers like Okta, Azure AD, or Ping Identity.
• Able to solve highly complex authentication and authorization problems within a global environment.
• Strong understanding of security practices related to identity management, including encryption and tokenization.
• Experience leading IAM system support, engineering, and operations teams in a global business unit.
• Understanding of SOX and GXP regulations.

Responsibilities

• Strategy & Leadership: Develop and execute a comprehensive Authentication strategy for enterprise applications.
• SSO / MFA Architecture & Design: Oversee design, implementation, and optimization of SSO/MFA framework.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with IT, security, development, and product teams.
• Security & Compliance: Ensure alignment with GDPR, HIPAA, NIST and implement security controls.
• Vendor & Tool Selection: Evaluate identity management tools and manage vendor relationships.
• Incident Management & Troubleshooting: Lead issue resolution for SSO/MFA functionality.
• User Experience Focus: Improve login experiences while maintaining security.
• Metrics & Reporting: Develop KPIs for SSO performance and security metrics.

Skills

SSO expertise

MFA experience

OAuth / OIDC

SAML

Identity federation

Cloud IAM

Security governance

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree

Tools

Okta

Azure AD

Ping Identity

Job description

Pfizer’s Identity Security and Access Management (ISAM) organization seeks a Senior Manager of Authentication to lead strategy, architecture, and operations for enterprise authentication across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments.

You will oversee SSO, MFA, identity federation, and token-based security while collaborating with Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Cloud Engineering, and business stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable solutions and reduce risk.