Senior Identity Platform Lead – Okta & Zero Trust

Vanguard; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Vanguard seeks a Senior Lead Identity Engineer to provide technical leadership for our workforce identity platform with deep Okta expertise. You will design, operate, and evolve enterprise-scale identity systems supporting high availability, regulatory compliance, and resiliency including multi‑IdP and directory strategies.

The ideal candidate has 12+ years in identity engineering, architects identity as a discipline, and collaborates across engineering, security, infra, and executives to drive

Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree in a related field or the equivalent combination of training and experience.
• 12+ years of Identity & Access Management engineering experience.
• Skilled in using DevOps tools and experience in Policy as code.
• Deep hands-on expertise with Okta (Workforce Identity, MFA, SSO, policies, lifecycle).
• Strong working knowledge of Ping Identity products (PingFederate, PingOne, Ping Directory) or equivalent platforms.
• Expert understanding of identity standards: OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML Federation and token-based security.
• Proven experience with directory services & LDAP (AD, cloud directories).
• Experience building identity platforms in AWS/GCP, including containerized/Kubernetes deployments.
• Strong troubleshooting skills for complex authentication and federation failures.
• Ability to operate in high-visibility, high-impact environments.

Responsibilities

• Serve as technical lead for workforce identity platforms, with Okta as the primary IdP and integrations to complementary platforms (e.g., Ping/Entra Identity).
• Own end‑to‑end identity architecture, including authentication flows, federation, directory integrations, and token issuance.
• Lead design reviews and decisions for IdP resiliency, failover, and supplier‑risk mitigation strategies.
• Document existing and new architecture and act as a hands‑on engineer while also setting technical direction, patterns, and standards.
• Strong communication, influence, and stakeholder‑management skills, with the ability to distill complex identity and security architectures into clear and concise messaging.

Skills

Identity engineering

Leadership

Communication

Mentoring

DevOps tools

Policy as code

Education

Bachelor's degree or related field

Tools

Okta

Ping Identity (PingFederate / PingOne)

Terraform / CloudFormation

Kubernetes

Docker

LDAP / Directory services

Job description

Vanguard seeks a Senior Lead Identity Engineer to provide technical leadership for our workforce identity platform with deep Okta expertise. You will design, operate, and evolve enterprise-scale identity systems supporting high availability, regulatory compliance, and resiliency including multi‑IdP and directory strategies.

The ideal candidate has 12+ years in identity engineering, architects identity as a discipline, and collaborates across engineering, security, infra, and executives to drive