Sr. Director, Customer Identity and Access Management

Zillow; United States; On-site; USD 250,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Zillow is seeking a Sr. Director of Customer Identity and Access Management to own strategy, execution, and maturity of our customer identity platform.

You will lead three engineering teams, support two Principal Engineers, and drive programs to unify authentication, fine-grained authorization, and centralized identity services across Zillow Group. You will set multi-year roadmaps, manage budgets, and articulate identity investments in business terms for executives, while recruiting senior

Qualifications

• Experience leading multi-team platform engineering organizations.
• Proven track record in shaping CIAM/identity platforms at scale.
• Strong stakeholder communication with executives and engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead multi-team organization through frontline Engineering Managers and align with Principal Engineers.
• Own 2-3 year roadmap for customer identity aligned with product priorities.
• Manage budget, tooling portfolio, and vendor relationships for CIAM.
• Represent CIAM at the executive level and translate identity architecture into business impact.

Skills

Leadership

Strategy development

Budgeting

Cross-team coordination

Executive communication

Tools

Identity Provider (IdP)

Project management tools

Job description

About the team

The Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) team sits within Foundations Engineering and owns the authentication and authorization platform for one of the most-visited websites in the United States, as well as our associated brands. Every sign-in, AI chat, session and permission check across Zillow's brands runs through systems this team builds and operates. We ship services, SDKs, and components that let product teams move quickly on web, mobile and AI interfaces without each team reinventing identity and access management.

We operate like a platform product team, not a gatekeeper. Our customers are the engineers and product teams across Zillow Group, and we measure ourselves by how much faster and safer they can ship because our paved paths exist. Our work spans an authentication platform that securely adapts to users needs as they become more serious about their home buying journey, a fine-grained authorization service designed for high-volume policy evaluation, and a growing set of centralized Customer and Identity services in our Consumer Domain that is the canonical source of truth for who our customers are.

This is a team where technical credibility matters. Our leaders write strategy documents, sit in design reviews, and can reason about token lifetimes and authorization models without a translator. If you have spent your career building platforms that other engineers depend on, this is the kind of organization you have been building toward.

About the role

As Sr. Director of Customer Identity and Access Management, you will own the strategy, execution, and maturity of Zillow's customer identity platform. You will lead three engineering teams through frontline Engineering Managers and directly support two Principal Engineers who anchor the technical direction of the platform.

Three programs define the next two years of this org's work:

• Centralized Authentication Platform. Consolidating authentication across Zillow Group's brands and surfaces onto a single, well-instrumented platform built on a commercial IdP that we extend substantially to meet consumer scale and experience requirements.
• Fine-Grained Authorization Platform. Building an authorization service that lets product teams express and evaluate permissions at the resource level, replacing the bespoke and duplicative access logic scattered across applications today.
• Consumer Domain - Centralized Customer and Identity services. Filling out the domain with authoritative customer and identity services so that profile, account, and entitlement data have one owner and one contract rather than a dozen partial copies.

We are looking for a strong, experienced leader. You come from a high-volume software or platform engineering background and you have never fully left it behind. You can earn trust with Principal Engineers, recruit senior talent who could work anywhere, negotiate roadmaps with internal leadership, and then turn around and frame identity investment in business terms for executives to easily understand. You will set multi-year technical roadmaps, own the operational budget and vendor strategy for your organization, and serve as Zillow's senior voice on customer identity, authentication and authorization.

Responsibilities

Leadership and Organizational Strategy

• Lead and develop a multi-team organization through frontline Engineering Managers, setting clear direction, healthy team culture, and high-performance expectations at every level.
• Directly support Principal Engineers who help you understand complex systems, anchor architectural decisions, and identify opportunities to innovate and align.
• Take broad strategy and focus areas from senior leadership and transform them into technical strategies, objectives, and tactical plans your teams can execute against.
• Work hand-in-hand with internal and external AI teams and financial platforms to simplify authentication and authorization while adapting our technical solutions to rapidly evolving areas of our business.
• Establish and execute a 2-3 year roadmap for customer identity that is tightly coupled to product and platform engineering priorities across Zillow Group.
• Own workforce planning, org design, hiring, and the development of a bench of future engineering leaders. Maintain premeditated succession plans and growth pathways for managers and ICs alike.
• Manage budget, tooling portfolio, and vendor relationships across your scope, with a clear view of your org's cost profile and its contribution to overall engineering spend.
• Represent CIAM at the executive level. Translate identity architecture and risk into business impact for leadership.

Centralized Authentication Platform

• Own the strategy for consolidating authentication across Zillow Group brands, surfaces, and acquisitions onto a single platform, sequencing migrations so partner teams are never blocked.
• Drive the extension of our commercial Identity Provider into a platform that meets Zillow-specific