Who we are looking for

Reporting to the Head of Identity & Access Management, the Head of Workforce Authentication Services, MD will lead the strategic direction, engineering, operations and compliance posture of all workforce authentication platforms at State Street. This role consolidates capabilities currently distributed across two towers into a single, accountable engineering and operations leadership role.

Why this role is important to us

The successful candidate will also serve as the engineering leader for the Workforce Passwordless program, owning the end-to-end technical execution and the elimination of password-dependent authentication protocols across the enterprise.

What you will be responsible for

Scope of Platforms and Services

The role owns engineering, operations, resilience and compliance for the workforce authentication platform stack, including but not limited to:

• Directory & Identity Plane: Active Directory (on-premises forests, domain controllers, Kerberos, Group Policy), Microsoft Entra ID, Entra Connect, Cloud Kerberos Trust, Conditional Access

• Federation & SSO: Identity Providers, SAML/OIDC federation, SSO onboarding intake and engineering

• Strong Authentication & MFA: MFA systems, FIDO2, MFA compliance reporting and exception management

• Passwordless Program (Workforce): Engineering leadership across the full passwordless roadmap — vendor assessments, CA policy design, OS/endpoint integration and other touch points in the technology stack.

• Resilience & Operations: 24x7 run of authentication services, DR/BCP, capacity, patching, DC exit programs, vulnerability and pen-test finding remediation across the authentication estate

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Develop and execute a single, unified Workforce Authentication strategy that consolidates all authentication services into one engineering and operations function with one accountable leader.

• Define the multi-year target architecture for authentication aligned to State Street's Technology and Security strategies

• Partner with the Heads of CIAM, Privileged & Infrastructure Access, IGA, and IAM Oversight to ensure a coherent, end-to-end IAM operating model.

Engineering Leadership – Workforce Passwordless

• Serve as the engineering owner of the Workforce Passwordless program, accountable for delivery against EC-committed milestones and the financial plan.

• Lead the technical design and rollout of supporting technologies required to enable transition to passwordless authentication.

• Drive vendor and product assessments and lead comparative POCs aligned to State Street use cases.

Standards, Compliance & Lines of Defence

• Own the Authentication compliance with IAM Standard (Account Authentication, Password Parameters, MFA, Federation/SSO, Session Management) and ensure alignment to NIST SP 800-53, NIST SP 800-63B, DORA, BAIT, UK PRA SS1/21, MAS TRM, HKMA SPM and APRA CPS 234.

• Support assurance compliance with the Second Line of Defence (Technology Risk Management), Third Line (Corporate Audit) and External Auditors (E&Y) — including evidence ownership, RCSA control mapping, and finding remediation.

• Provide a support and data for compliance management across the workforce authentication environment: control design, control testing readiness, KRI/KPI reporting to the IAM Governance Council, Cybersecurity Risk Committee (CRC) and Technology Risk Committee (TRC).

Remediation & Audit/Pen-Test Findings

• Own end-to-end remediation of all audit, regulatory and penetration-test findings affecting workforce authentication.

Resilience & Operations of Critical Systems

• Accountable for the availability, performance and resilience of Tier-0 authentication services including DR posture, recovery testing, capacity management, and major-incident command for authentication outages.

• Own the operational interface for Authentication Services with key partners including End User Computing, Platform Engineering, Production Management, Network and the regional IT heads.

People & Operating Model

• Lead a globally distributed team across; evolve the operating model in line with the IAM portfolio management framework.

• Drive talent strategy, succession, and a culture of engineering excellence, multi-disciplinary delivery and accountable ownership.

What we value

These skills will help you succeed in this role

• 15+ years in technology / engineering / security roles, with at least 8 years leading large-scale authentication engineering and operations functions ideally in a regulated financial services environment.

• Deep, hands-on technical depth across Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, Kerberos, LDAP, SAML, OIDC, FIDO2/WebAuthn, MFA, and federation platforms.

• Proven track record of regulator-facing and audit-facing accountability, with the ability to defend control design and enhancement plans to PRA, FCA, DORA, MAS, HKMA, APRA and internal/external audit.

• Experience operating Tier-0 critical services with strict availability, DR and resilience SLAs.

Education & Preferred Qualifications

• Experience consolidating previously siloed identity/authentication towers into a single accountable function.

• Experience leading globally distributed teams across US, EMEA and India.

• Bachelors Degree in Cyber Security or related technical discipline