Security Architect – Agentic Identity & Access Management
Location: Dallas, TX(Hybrid – 3 days a Week Onsite)
Required Skills (include proficiency level and/or minimum # of years of experience, tools, software applications, etc. Please list in order of most to least importance):
We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged to improve the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.
Job Summary:
We are seeking an experienced Cybersecurity Architect to design integrated authorization architecture and governance model for AI applications and agents across SWA within the Identity and Access Management space; evaluate and recommend new and/or existing capabilities and tools that integrate with SWA infrastructure, including emerging technologies; and to serve as Subject Matter Expert to Cybersecurity Teams on identity governance for AI systems, building durable capabilities.
WORK ACTIVITIES/CONTEXT:
Define the enterprise target-state architecture and governance model for identities, delegated authority, and authorization across AI applications, agents, tools, APIs, and human users.
Establish reusable authorization patterns for user-to-agent, agent-to-tool, machine-to-machine, and agent-to-agent interactions.
Design policy enforcement approaches that support least privilege, ZSP, separation of duties, context-aware access, runtime decisioning, and human-in-the-loop guardrails.
Define lifecycle governance for AI agents and other non-human identities, including registration, sponsorship, ownership, credential issuance, rotation, recertification, suspension, deprovisioning, and evidence retention.
Develop standards for OAuth 2.0, OIDC, token exchange, workload identity, delegated authorization, service accounts, and short-lived credentials.
Evaluate vendor and native platform capabilities; document options, tradeoffs, integration impacts, risks, and recommendations for Southwest.
Partner with IAM, IGA, PAM, Enterprise Access Management, Cloud Security, Application Security, AI Engineering, AI Governance, Enterprise Architecture, and platform teams to align controls and operating responsibilities.
Create reference architectures, design principles, control requirements, decision records, implementation roadmaps, and adoption guidance.
Support solution reviews and threat-informed design decisions for AI use cases, MCP servers, agent tools, data access paths, and autonomous actions.
Define logging, traceability, audit evidence, and monitoring requirements that connect an agent action to the agent identity, sponsoring owner, delegated user or system, authorization decision, and affected resource.
Provide technical leadership and consultation to Cyber teams; translate complex IAM and AI security concepts into clear decisions for engineers, product teams, leaders, and governance forums.
Track relevant market and technology developments and recommend updates to architecture standards and strategic roadmaps
