Global It Director - Principal Security Engineer

BCG BCG · Consulting · London, United Kingdom · Technology and Engineering

The Principal IAM Engineer is the senior technical authority for identity services, responsible for designing, implementing, and governing enterprise-wide IAM capabilities across workforce, partner, and customer identities. This role combines deep hands-on engineering with architecture and leadership, driving the modernization of authentication, authorization, identity lifecycle, and privileged access controls across our cloud and on-prem environments.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own the end‑to‑end technical delivery of IAM services, including identity lifecycle management, authentication, authorization, SSO, and privileged access controls, ensuring they are secure, scalable, and highly available.
  2. Lead design sessions, collaborating with Entrprise Architecture, and implementation of IAM integrations for SaaS, on‑prem, and AWS cloud platforms, including federation (SAML, OIDC, OAuth), MFA, and Passwordless capabilities.
  3. Serve as the primary escalation point for complex IAM engineering issues; perform root‑cause analysis and drive long‑term remediation and hardening of IAM platforms and related services.
  4. Partner with security architecture, infrastructure, application, and HR/IT teams to align IAM solutions with enterprise security strategy, compliance obligations, and business objectives.
  5. Define IAM engineering standards, patterns, and reference architectures; guide other engineers in implementing secure onboarding patterns for applications into IGA, PAM, and SSO platforms.

Skills

Required

  • Information security engineering
  • Infrastructure engineering
  • IAM platforms
  • Microsoft Entra ID
  • Active Directory
  • Federation protocols (SAML, OIDC, OAuth2)
  • Hybrid multi-cloud environments
  • Automation of provisioning
  • Access reviews
  • RBAC/ABAC models
  • Secrets management solutions
  • Scripting or programming language (PowerShell, Python, or Java)
  • Privileged Access management (CyberArk)
  • Authentication/AuthN (Okta)
  • Federated Identity (EntraID)
  • Cloud Identity (AWS, GCP, Azure)
  • Automation (terraform, codex, claude)
  • Application SSO (OIDC, SAML)
  • Identity Governance (Sailpoint, Okta, Veza)

Nice to have

  • AI-driven access orchestration strategies
  • Agentic AI tools for intelligent decisioning

What the JD emphasized

  • 5 years of hands-on-keyboard experience with core IAM platforms
  • Deep expertise with the majority of our IAM stack
  • Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Entra ID and Active Directory
  • extensive experience implementing federation protocols (SAML, OIDC, OAuth2)
  • Proven track record designing and implementing IAM solutions in hybrid multi-cloud environments
  • automation of provisioning, access reviews, and RBAC/ABAC models
  • Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (such as PowerShell, Python, or Java)
  • Exceptional sense of ownership
  • Highly advanced ability to breakdown work to deliver value incrementally
  • Experience leading large-scale IAM programs
  • Prior responsibility as a technical lead or architect for IAM
  • mentoring teams and influencing roadmaps beyond direct reporting lines
  • strong bias toward automation and measurable risk reduction
  • Define and lead the implementation of the organization’s security strategy
  • Architect and implement solutions across workforce IAM, PAM, and customer IAM ecosystems.
  • Provide thought leadership in adopting passwordless authentication, passkeys, adaptive MFA, and AI-driven access orchestration strategies
  • Engineer integrations with Agentic AI tools for intelligent decisioning, policy enforcement, and autonomous identity lifecycle operations.
  • Develop and automate provisioning/deprovisioning workflows
  • Ensure integration of IAM with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) and SaaS applications.
  • Mentor and develop the skills of senior security engineers