Senior Director, IAM Engineering & Operations

UKG•Sunrise, FL

1d•$207,400 - $298,100

About The Position

UKG is seeking a Senior Director of Identity & Access Management (IAM) to lead and evolve our identity security strategy across enterprise and customer-facing platforms. This role is critical in ensuring secure, seamless, and scalable identity experiences for employees, customers, and partners across UKG’s SaaS ecosystem. You will oversee IAM, PAM, PKI, Active Directory (AD), and SSO/federation services, while driving a modern, cloud-first identity architecture aligned with Zero Trust principles. This leader will bring strong engineering depth, enabling identity as a platform, and a proven ability to build and scale high-performing global teams.

Requirements

Experience leading IAM organizations within highly regulated industries (financial services experience preferred).
Experience supporting regulatory audits, compliance programs, and governance initiatives.
Experience managing both IAM engineering and IAM operations functions.
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related field
12+ years of experience in IAM, security, or platform engineering, with 5+ years in senior leadership roles
Strong software engineering background (Java, Python, .NET, or similar) with hands-on IAM solution development
Proven success building and scaling global engineering teams in a SaaS or product organization
Deep expertise in: IAM platforms (SailPoint, Saviynt, Okta, Ping, etc.), PAM solutions (CyberArk, BeyondTrust, etc.), Active Directory & Azure AD / Entra ID, SSO & federation protocols (SAML, OAuth, OIDC), PKI and machine identity management
Experience supporting high-scale, highly available SaaS environments

Nice To Haves

Industry certifications (CISSP, CISM, etc.)
Experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred) and microservices architecture
Familiarity with SRE practices, observability, and reliability engineering

Responsibilities

Lead a global IAM Engineering & Operations organization.
Drive operational excellence, platform reliability, and service maturity.
Lead identity governance across both human and non-human (machine) identities.
Partner with audit, risk, and compliance organizations to support regulatory and governance initiatives.
Build and develop high-performing engineering leaders and teams.
Define and execute a cloud-first IAM strategy supporting UKG’s SaaS products and internal enterprise systems
Partner with Product Engineering, Security, and Platform teams to embed identity into the software development lifecycle
Champion identity as a core platform capability, enabling secure and frictionless user experiences
Align IAM initiatives with customer trust, compliance, and uptime expectations in a SaaS environment
Build, scale, and lead global IAM engineering, platform, and operations teams
Foster a product and platform mindset within IAM (API-first, reusable services, developer enablement)
Drive a culture of automation, reliability engineering (SRE principles), and continuous delivery
Develop leadership bench strength and succession pipelines
Lead development of scalable IAM services, APIs, and identity orchestration workflows
Oversee integrations with customer-facing applications, SaaS platforms, and internal systems
Enable CIAM (Customer Identity & Access Management) capabilities where applicable
Promote DevSecOps practices, infrastructure-as-code, and automation in identity provisioning and governance
Implement scalable identity lifecycle management and access governance across a distributed workforce
Mature RBAC/ABAC models and access certification processes
Ensure alignment with SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and other relevant compliance standards
Lead PAM strategy to secure privileged access across cloud and production environments
Implement just-in-time (JIT) access, session monitoring, and credential vaulting
Reduce attack surface and enforce least privilege at scale
Oversee PKI and certificate lifecycle management supporting secure communications and services
Enable machine identity management and certificate-based authentication across cloud workloads
Support encryption and key management strategies aligned with SaaS security requirements
Lead modernization of Active Directory (hybrid) and Azure AD / Entra ID environments
Drive transition toward cloud-native identity and directory services
Ensure high availability, resilience, and security of identity infrastructure
Embed IAM within UKG’s Zero Trust architecture
Proactively identify and mitigate identity-based threats and vulnerabilities
Support audits, incident response, and continuous compliance efforts