IAM Design SME - NextGen

IAM Design SME - NextGen

Location: Sheffield - 3 days per week onsite
Salary/Rate: Up to £563.00 per day
Start Date: End of October
Job Type: Contract - Initial contract until 20th December 2026

Company Introduction

We have an exciting opportunity with a leading global financial services organisation undergoing a major transformation of its Identity and Access Management (IAM) capabilities. They are seeking an experienced IAM Design SME to provide technical leadership, shape next-generation identity architecture and deliver secure, scalable solutions across a complex enterprise environment.

Job Responsibilities/Objectives

You will play a key role in defining and delivering next-generation IAM capabilities, working closely with architects, security specialists, business stakeholders and engineering teams to translate requirements into robust technical solutions.

1. Technical Design & Architecture: Produce High-Level Designs (HLDs), Low-Level Designs (LLDs) and end-to-end technical solutions, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture and security requirements.
2. Identity & Zero Trust: Design authentication, authorisation, identity federation and Zero Trust architectures, covering human identity, agent identity and workload identity.
3. Cloud & Integration Architecture: Develop cloud-native identity solutions across GCP and Kubernetes, including API security, service-to-service authentication and event-driven integration patterns.
4. Security & Policy Design: Define Policy-as-Code architectures, Policy Decision Points (PDPs), Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs), secrets management, certificate lifecycle management and PKI integration.
5. Architecture Governance: Lead technical design reviews, contribute to Architecture Review Boards, document architecture decisions and ensure solutions meet enterprise standards and regulatory requirements.
6. Engineering & Technical Leadership: Support implementation, testing and production readiness, review supplier deliverables, manage technical risks and mentor engineering teams in best practice.

Required Skills/Experience

The ideal candidate will have the following:

1. Enterprise IAM Architecture: Strong experience designing and delivering enterprise Identity and Access Management solutions within large, complex organisations.
2. Identity & Security: Excellent knowledge of authentication, authorisation, Zero Trust architecture and federation protocols, including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML and SCIM.
3. Cloud & Container Architecture: Experience with GCP, Kubernetes, API security and service-to-service or workload authentication patterns.
4. Advanced Identity Capabilities: Experience designing human, agent and workload identity solutions, alongside Policy-as-Code technologies such as OPA or Cedar.
5. Security Engineering: Knowledge of PKI, certificate lifecycle management, secrets management, DevSecOps and CI/CD practices.
6. Technical Design & Leadership: Proven experience producing HLDs and LLDs, conducting design assurance, supporting architecture governance and engaging senior technical stakeholders.

Desirable Skills/Experience

Although not essential, the following skills are desired by the client:

1. Experience with service mesh technologies and cloud-native security patterns.
2. Knowledge of event-driven architecture, messaging platforms and asynchronous processing.
3. Experience designing high availability, disaster recovery, resilience and performance capabilities.
4. Experience delivering large-scale IAM transformation programmes, evaluating identity technology vendors and defining future-state architecture roadmaps.

Benefits & Perks

The role offers the opportunity to contribute to a major enterprise transformation programme within a global financial services environment.

1. Opportunity to shape next-generation IAM architecture and security capabilities.
2. Exposure to modern cloud-native identity technologies and advanced security patterns.
3. Collaboration with experienced architects, security specialists and engineering teams.
4. Competitive contract rate of up to £630 per day.

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