Senior Authentication, SSO/MFA & CIAM SME Lead

PepsiCo•Plano, TX

22h•Onsite

About The Position

The Authentication, SSO/MFA and CIAM SME/Architect will serve as a senior technical leader within the IAM organization, responsible for defining, architecting, designing, and delivering secure authentication and access management solutions across workforce, partner, and customer identity use cases. This role requires deep hands-on expertise in modern authentication, SSO federation, MFA, passwordless authentication, CIAM, and identity security across hybrid on-premises and cloud environments. The candidate will partner with enterprise architects, cybersecurity, infrastructure, application, and business teams to deliver scalable solutions that improve security, reduce risk, support compliance, and enable business outcomes. This role is based out of Plano, Texas and requires coming into the office.

Requirements

15+ years of overall IT experience, with significant experience in enterprise IAM, cybersecurity, architecture, or application security.
10+ years of hands-on experience architecting, designing, and delivering authentication, SSO, MFA, federation, and access management solutions.
7+ years of hands-on experience with Okta or comparable identity platforms such as Ping, Microsoft Entra ID, ForgeRock, SiteMinder, or similar technologies.
Strong working knowledge of SAML, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, SCIM, LDAP, Kerberos, API security, session management, token lifecycle, and modern authentication flows.
Proven experience integrating SaaS, cloud, mobile, API, legacy, and on-premises applications with enterprise SSO and MFA solutions.
Hands-on scripting or development experience using PowerShell, Python, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, REST APIs, or similar technologies.
Experience with troubleshooting complex authentication issues across browsers, certificates, DNS, network, proxy, load balancers, directories, APIs, and cloud components.
Experience working with Agile and DevOps tools, automation practices, release management, and production support processes.
Okta Certified Administrator required or strongly preferred; Okta Certified Consultant, Developer, Professional, or equivalent IAM certification preferred.
BS/BA degree or equivalent practical experience.
Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex authentication and CIAM concepts to technical teams, business stakeholders, risk partners, and leadership.
Ability to influence architecture decisions, challenge assumptions, and drive alignment across application, infrastructure, cybersecurity, privacy, and enterprise architecture teams.
Self-starter who can operate with limited direction, own complex technical problems, and drive them to closure.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to simplify complex requirements into secure, practical, and scalable solutions.
Strong delivery discipline with the ability to balance architecture quality, security requirements, operational stability, and business timelines.
Ability to mentor engineers, review technical designs, and raise the overall maturity of the authentication engineering function.
Flexible and adaptable, with the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced enterprise environment.

Nice To Haves

Deep experience with Okta Workforce Identity, Okta Customer Identity, Okta Access Gateway, Okta API Access Management, Lifecycle Management, Workflows, Hooks, and Administrative APIs.
Strong CIAM architecture experience, including customer onboarding, registration, authentication journeys, account recovery, consent, privacy, profile management, social identity, and fraud/risk controls.
Experience designing authentication solutions for B2B, B2C, partner, contractor, and machine-to-machine use cases.
Strong understanding of zero trust, least privilege, conditional access, adaptive MFA, phishing-resistant MFA, FIDO2/WebAuthn, passkeys, and passwordless authentication.
Experience with Microsoft Entra ID, PingFederate, SiteMinder, ForgeRock, AWS Cognito, Azure AD B2C, or other identity and federation platforms.
Experience with privileged access, service accounts, bot accounts, non-human identities, and secure access patterns for automation and integrations.
Experience designing and reviewing authentication controls for applications containing confidential, restricted, regulated, or sensitive data.
Strong understanding of directory services such as Active Directory, LDAP, Oracle LDAP, and cloud directory services.
Experience with API security, REST integrations, custom connectors, SCIM provisioning, identity orchestration, and workflow automation.
Experience with monitoring, logging, and troubleshooting using tools such as Splunk, ELK, Prometheus, or similar platforms.
Experience with cloud, container, and DevOps technologies such as Azure, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, and CI/CD pipelines.
Experience with web infrastructure components such as Apache, middleware, certificates, load balancers, WAF, reverse proxy, and Linux/Windows platforms.
Security certifications such as CISSP, CCSP, CIAM, or equivalent identity/security certifications are a plus.

Responsibilities

Serve as the senior SME/Architect for Authentication, SSO, MFA, passwordless, federation, and CIAM capabilities across enterprise IAM platforms.
Design and solution secure authentication patterns for cloud, SaaS, on-premises, mobile, API, B2B, workforce, and customer-facing applications.
Lead technical architecture for SSO integrations using SAML, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, WS-Federation, header-based authentication, reverse proxy, and legacy application patterns.
Define MFA and adaptive authentication strategies, including risk-based access, device trust, step-up authentication, passwordless, and phishing-resistant authentication options.
Architect CIAM solutions supporting customer registration, login, profile management, consent, progressive profiling, social login, account recovery, and secure API access.
Partner with application, cybersecurity, privacy, infrastructure, legal, and business teams to translate business requirements into secure, scalable IAM solutions.
Assess current authentication implementations and recommend improvements aligned with security standards, regulatory requirements, zero trust principles, and enterprise architecture guidelines.
Provide hands-on technical leadership for complex integrations, troubleshooting, root cause analysis, production support, and platform stability.
Develop reusable architecture patterns, reference designs, integration standards, decision records, and implementation playbooks for authentication and CIAM capabilities.
Drive platform modernization, automation, and roadmap execution for IAM authentication services, including Okta and related identity platforms.
Support governance, risk reduction, audit readiness, and operational controls by ensuring authentication solutions meet security, compliance, logging, monitoring, and access policy requirements.
Mentor engineers and delivery teams, provide technical reviews, and enable knowledge transfer across internal and external stakeholders.
Champion Agile and DevOps practices, including automation, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and reliable change delivery.