Principal CIAM Architect

Citizens Financial Group•Phoenix, AZ

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The CIAM Architect provides technical architecture and strategic leadership for Citizens' Customer Identity and Authentication platform, helping define and advance a modern, scalable, secure, and customer-focused identity ecosystem. The role establishes target-state architecture, technical standards, and integration patterns for customer authentication, authorization, identity federation, identity orchestration, and digital identity services across Citizens. The architect partners with Digital Identity, Security Engineering, Product Management, Enterprise Architecture, Application Architecture, Fraud, Risk, and Technology teams to translate customer identity strategy into scalable technical architecture. This is an architecture and technical strategy role rather than a traditional hands-on engineering or platform operations position. The architect provides technical direction to engineering teams responsible for implementing and operating CIAM capabilities. The position follows a hybrid arrangement: four days onsite and one remote, based in one of the listed hubs: Johnston, Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; Marlton, New Jersey; Phoenix, Arizona; Irving, Texas; or Charlotte, North Carolina.

Requirements

Extensive experience designing enterprise Identity and Access Management or Customer Identity and Access Management architectures.
Strong direct experience with customer-facing identity and authentication platforms at enterprise scale.
Architecture experience with one or more major CIAM technologies such as Ping Identity, ForgeRock, Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Entra External ID, or comparable platforms.
Deep understanding of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, FIDO2, WebAuthn, and modern identity federation standards.
Experience architecting Passwordless Authentication, Passkeys, Multifactor Authentication, Adaptive Authentication, or Risk Based Authentication capabilities.
Experience designing identity solutions supporting web, mobile, and API-based digital applications.
Experience with identity orchestration, identity proofing, customer authorization, session management, and authentication journey architecture.
Experience integrating identity architecture with fraud detection, risk signals, device intelligence, or behavioral analytics.
Strong understanding of Zero Trust architecture and modern identity security principles.
Experience designing highly available and resilient identity platforms supporting large customer populations and high transaction volumes.
Experience operating within a highly regulated enterprise environment, preferably financial services.
Demonstrated ability to translate business, product, security, and customer requirements into enterprise architecture and technical standards.
Strong ability to influence architecture and engineering decisions across multiple technology teams without relying on direct reporting authority.

Nice To Haves

Financial services, banking, payments, or other highly regulated industry experience.
Experience modernizing or consolidating complex enterprise CIAM environments.
Experience with cloud-based identity architectures across Microsoft Azure or AWS environments.
Experience establishing CIAM architecture standards, reference architectures, and reusable integration patterns.
Experience partnering with enterprise architecture governance or architecture review processes.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve the target-state architecture for Citizens' Customer Identity and Authentication ecosystem.
Establish enterprise architecture patterns and technical standards for customer authentication, authorization, federation, identity orchestration, and identity lifecycle services.
Develop architecture for modern authentication capabilities, including Passkeys, Passwordless Authentication, Multifactor Authentication, Adaptive Authentication, Risk Based Authentication, and Identity Federation.
Provide architectural leadership across CIAM platforms and technologies, including Ping Identity, ForgeRock, Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Entra ID, or comparable enterprise identity platforms.
Define architecture patterns using OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, FIDO2, WebAuthn, and related identity standards.
Partner with Product Management to translate CIAM product strategy and roadmap into scalable technical architecture and platform capabilities.
Partner with engineering teams to translate architectural direction into executable technology solutions and provide technical oversight through implementation.
Define reusable integration patterns for digital applications, APIs, mobile experiences, and other customer-facing services connecting to centralized identity capabilities.
Lead architecture decisions involving identity orchestration, authentication journeys, identity proofing, account recovery, session management, and customer authorization.
Establish architecture for integrating customer identity with fraud signals, device intelligence, behavioral analytics, and risk-based authentication capabilities.
Ensure CIAM architecture supports enterprise-scale requirements for high availability, resiliency, scalability, performance, and security.
Evaluate existing identity technologies and recommend modernization, consolidation, and migration strategies.
Provide architectural guidance for cloud, hybrid, and API-based identity services.
Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Security Architecture, application teams, and technology leadership to align CIAM architecture with Citizens' enterprise technology and security standards.
Identify architectural risks, technology dependencies, and platform constraints, and develop strategies to address them.
Serve as a senior technical advisor for complex CIAM architecture, authentication, and identity integration decisions.
Evaluate emerging identity technologies and industry developments and recommend opportunities that advance Citizens' long-term CIAM strategy.