Senior IAM Architect — Modern Identity & Zero-Trust

Glocomms; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Glocomms, partnering with a leading financial services firm in Chicago, is seeking an Identity and Access Management Architect to design and drive modernization.

You will lead migration to federated identity, build PoCs, evaluate solutions, and shape secure auth for apps, APIs, and machines, collaborating with security, compliance, and engineering teams.

This role demands senior architectural vision, vendor management, and the ability to balance security with reliability and user experience.

Qualifications

• Proven expertise in IAM architecture and modern authentication protocols.
• Experience implementing enterprise identity platforms such as Okta, Azure Entra ID, Ping Identity, ForgeRock.
• Strong software or infra engineering background with IaC and Go or Python.
• Experience securing machine-to-machine authentication and non-human identities.
• Understanding of secrets management, identity federation, certificate-based authentication, and workload identity.
• Proven modernization and migration leadership of legacy identity environments.
• Strong stakeholder management and ability to influence leaders.
• Advanced system design and architecture experience.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and align identity architectures with governance and compliance.

Responsibilities

• Design and lead migration strategy from legacy IAM to a modern federated platform.
• Remain hands-on by building PoC integrations, automation, writing code, and configuring identity services.
• Lead technical evaluations of IAM and governance solutions through practical testing in enterprise environments.
• Design secure authentication and authorization frameworks for applications, APIs, microservices, and machine identities using zero-trust principles.
• Partner with engineering, security, compliance, and business stakeholders to translate security and regulatory requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Define standards for identity integration and ensure seamless identity flows across internally developed and third-party systems.
• Serve as the primary architectural authority for identity modernization efforts, balancing security, scalability, reliability, and user experience.

Skills

IAM architecture

Authentication protocols

Enterprise IAM platforms

IaC & Go or Python

Machine-to-machine auth

Secrets management & federation

Migration & modernization

Stakeholder management

Advanced system design

Ambiguity navigation

Job description

Glocomms, partnering with a leading financial services firm in Chicago, is seeking an Identity and Access Management Architect to design and drive modernization.

You will lead migration to federated identity, build PoCs, evaluate solutions, and shape secure auth for apps, APIs, and machines, collaborating with security, compliance, and engineering teams.

This role demands senior architectural vision, vendor management, and the ability to balance security with reliability and user experience.