IAM Architect

IAM Architect

Remote

W2 Contract(USC)

Application/System Architect IBM Verify Identity Access (IVIA)

About the Role

We are seeking a hands-on Application/System Architect to lead the evolution of our IBM Verify Identity Access (IVIA) platform, ensuring we fully leverage its capabilities to improve processes, strengthen security, and meet customer needs. This is not a role for someone who prefers to work at a distance, producing designs and handing them off. We need an architect who works embedded within Agile/SAFe teams, thinks beyond the team level to the broader system and train, and turns architecture into incremental enablers and runway rather than large upfront designs.

The ideal candidate knows how to sequence architectural work alongside business priorities, partner with Product Management on roadmap and sequencing decisions, and validate ideas through proofs of concept rather than committing early to a single design. This person understands that good architecture serves the product and the customer - and helps the organization avoid falling back into large upfront/waterfall architecture practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Evolve IVIA Capabilities: Lead the ongoing evolution of IBM Verify Identity Access, identifying opportunities to leverage its full capabilities to enhance processes, strengthen security posture, and meet evolving customer needs.
• Architectural Enablers & Runway: Partner with Product Management, Product Owners, and engineering teams to identify architectural and technical enablers - including technical debt - translate them into appropriately sized backlog items, and ensure they are prioritized early enough to create architectural runway for upcoming business capabilities. Help teams understand the purpose, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and sequencing of enabler work, rather than treating architecture as a separate upfront phase.
• Systems-Level Thinking: Look beyond individual team or sprint-level concerns to understand cross-team dependencies, shared components, and system-wide impacts - operating with a train/system-level perspective rather than a purely local one.
• Proof of Concept Development: Build and run multiple proofs of concept for key architectural decisions (e.g., authentication flows, integration patterns, scaling strategies) to validate assumptions with real data before committing to a direction.
• Partner with Product Management: Collaborate closely with Product Manager/Product Owner(s) to understand customer needs, business drivers, and desired outcomes, while also helping translate architectural needs, technical debt, dependencies, risk, and emerging technology considerations into actionable enablers and roadmap input. Help Product Management understand the sequencing and technical runway required to deliver capabilities incrementally, rather than relying on large upfront architectural designs. Ensure architectural decisions support the product roadmap while remaining grounded in industry standards and best practices.
• Embedded Technical Partner: Work directly within Agile teams - participating in sprint planning, backlog refinement, and PI Planning to provide real-time architectural guidance and help shape how enabler work is sequenced.
• Hands-On Technical Guidance: Provide direct engineering support including design reviews, pairing on complex implementation problems, and guidance on secure coding, integration patterns, and platform best practices.
• Quality & Non-Functional Requirements: Partner with the engineering team (who own both development and testing) to ensure architecture decisions support testability, automation, and non-functional requirements such as performance, security, and scalability - treating NFRs as first-class drivers of architectural runway, not just testing checkboxes.
• Production Architecture & Troubleshooting: Ability to trace complex authentication and application flows across distributed IAM, network, load-balancing, and application components; use logs and observability data to isolate failures; and translate production findings into architectural improvements and backlog work.
• Security & Compliance: Ensure architecture aligns with enterprise identity and access management standards, zero-trust principles, and regulatory/compliance requirements.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Partner with Enterprise Architects, Security teams, Infrastructure teams, and Product Owners to align solution design with broader technology strategy.
• Documentation as a Living Artifact: Maintain lightweight, evolving architecture documentation (decision records, diagrams, ADRs) that reflects current-state and near-term direction rather than exhaustive upfront specs.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in application/system architecture roles, with significant hands-on involvement.
• Deep experience with IBM Security Verify Access / Verify Identity Access (ISAM/IVIA) or comparable Identity and Access Management platforms.
• Strong experience with containerized application environments (e.g., Kubernetes/OpenShift), including deployment, scaling, and security practices.
• Demonstrated experience operating as a System/Application Architect within an Agile delivery environment at scale, with experience supporting PI planning, backlog refinement, architectural enablers, technical runway, and iterative delivery in collaboration with Product Management, Product Owners, and engineering teams. SAFe experience strongly preferred.
• Experience owning, writing, or managing enabler epics/features and technical roadmap items within a backlog tool (e.g., Jira, Rally) as part of a broader agile delivery process.
• Practical experience building and running proofs of concept and prototypes to validate architectural options before committing to a design direction.
• Proven ability to partner with Product Management to shape technical roadmaps that balance customer needs, business priorities, and technical feasibility.
• Identity & Federation Standards: Deep, hands-on experience architecting federation and authentication solutions using SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SCIM, JWT, and LDAP to support secure access across cloud, SaaS, partner, and enterprise applications.
• IVIA Federation & Runtime Configuration: Experience designing, implementing, and optimizing IVIA federation services, including OIDC Provider runtimes and WebSEAL reverse proxy junctions, to support multi-tenant and enterprise-scale authentication.
• Modern Authentication Mechanisms: Experience integrating modern authentication approaches - including MFA, passwordless authentication, FIDO2, adaptive authentication, and decentralized identity credentials - into enterprise IAM architectures.
• Security Standards & Regulatory Alignment: Working knowledge of relevant frameworks (NIST, Zero Trust Architecture, CIS Controls, PCI-DSS, SOX, FedRAMP where applicable) and the ability to ensure architectural decisions align with these standards.
• Strong scripting and automation experience using Python, JavaScript, Bash, or similar languages.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and GitOps methodologies.
• Excellent communication skills; comfortable navigating ambiguity and evolving requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• SAFe certification (SAFe Agilist, SAFe for Architects, or similar).
• Experience with IBM Verify Governance, Verify SaaS, or the broader IBM Security product suite.
• Experience with other IAM platforms (Ping, Okta, ForgeRock, Azure AD) for comparative architecture context.
• Background in DevSecOps and shift-left security practices.
• Experience mentoring engineering teams on emergent design and technical debt management.

What Makes This Role Different

This role requires more than technical depth. The ideal candidate:

• Thinks at the system/train level, not just the team level - understanding dependencies and impacts across the broader platform.
• Turns architecture into executable, sequenced backlog work rather than upfront specs handed off for others to implement.
• Builds and runs proofs of concept to validate ideas with real data, keeping options open until evidence points to the best path.
• Partners with Product Management as a true collaborator - shaping the roadmap, not just reacting to it.
• Stays engaged through implementation and production support, using real operational insight to inform future architecture decisions.