What's the role?
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.
Key Responsibilities:
- Own the end‑to‑end technical design of IAM services, including identity lifecycle management, authentication, authorization, SSO, and privileged access controls, ensuring they are secure, scalable, and highly available.
- Lead design and implementation of IAM integrations for SaaS, on‑prem, and AWS cloud platforms, including federation (SAML, OIDC, OAuth), MFA, and Passwordless capabilities.
- 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.
- Partner with security architecture, infrastructure, application, and HR/IT teams to align IAM solutions with enterprise security strategy, compliance obligations, and business objectives.
- Define IAM engineering standards, patterns, and reference architectures; guide other engineers in implementing secure onboarding patterns for applications into IGA, PAM, and SSO platforms.
- Lead modernization initiatives.
- Contribute to audits, risk assessments, and regulatory reviews by providing technical evidence, designing compensating controls, and closing identified IAM control gaps.
- Mentor and coach IAM engineers and analysts, promoting engineering excellence, documentation discipline, and a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
Bring your best! What this role needs:
- 10+ years of experience in information security or infrastructure engineering, with at least 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 as foundational directory services, and extensive experience implementing federation protocols (SAML, OIDC, OAuth2).
- Proven track record designing and implementing IAM solutions in hybrid multi-cloud environments, including the automation of provisioning, access reviews, and RBAC/ABAC models.
- Experience with secrets management solutions.
- Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (such as PowerShell, Python, or Java) to automate tasks and build custom connectors for our IAM tools.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts related to our IAM ecosystem for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Exceptional sense of ownership and the ability to work with a limited set of requirements.
- 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, including mentoring teams and influencing roadmaps beyond direct reporting lines.
- Demonstrated ability to balance security, usability, and operational efficiency, with a strong bias toward automation and measurable risk reduction.
#LI-Hybrid
Compensation Range:
Pay Range - Start:
$135,800.00
Pay Range - End:
$252,200.00
Geographic Specific Pay Structure:
Structure 110:
Structure 115:
We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you’re living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.
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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.