Senior Director, Identity Access Management & Data Security Engineering

About the role

Zelis is modernizing the healthcare financial experience across payers, providers, and healthcare consumers. This is a senior leadership role responsible for the strategy, architecture, engineering, and operations of enterprise-wide identity, access, and data protection programs.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a multi-disciplinary team of engineers, architects, and analysts across IAM and data security domains both in the US and India.
• Define team structure, hiring roadmap, and career development frameworks to attract and retain top security engineering talent.
• Foster a culture of ownership, continuous learning, and security-first engineering.
• Serve as a visible advocate for security engineering practices across engineering and product organizations.
• Develop a multi-year IAM and data security roadmap aligned to business growth, M&A integration, and regulatory evolution.
• Own the end-to-end IAM strategy covering workforce identity, customer identity (CIAM), privileged access management (PAM), and machine/service identity.
• Architect and deliver Zero Trust access models, MFA enforcement, SSO, RBAC/ABAC policies, and identity federation across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Drive adoption of modern identity standards including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, SCIM, and FIDO2/WebAuthn.
• Oversee privileged access governance and just-in-time access workflows for production healthcare and financial systems.
• Lead the evaluation, selection, and operationalization of IAM platforms (e.g., MFA, IGA, PAM, Non Human Identity etc.).
• Develop and execute a comprehensive data security strategy spanning data classification, data loss prevention (DLP), encryption at rest and in transit, tokenization, and secrets management.
• Ensure robust protection of Protected Health Information (PHI) and Personally Identifiable Financial Information (PIFI) across all data stores, pipelines, and APIs.
• Lead implementation and enforcement of data access governance, including automated discovery, tagging, and lineage for sensitive data across cloud data lakes and warehouses.
• Partner with data engineering and ML teams to embed privacy-by-design and security-by-design principles into data platform architectures.
• Own the IAM and data security sections of audit readiness programs, regulatory examinations, and third-party assessments.
• Define metrics, KPIs, and executive dashboards to communicate program health and risk posture to the CISO, CTO, and Board.
• Partner with Legal and Privacy teams on data breach response, regulatory notifications, and privacy impact assessments.
• Collaborate with Infrastructure, DevOps, and Platform Engineering to embed security controls natively into CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure (IaC).
• Evaluate and manage relationships with security technology vendors, MSSPs, and industry partners.
• Represent the organization in industry forums, regulatory engagements, and partner/customer security reviews.

Requirements

12+ years of progressive experience in information security, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role managing security engineering teams.

Deep hands-on expertise in IAM technologies: Okta, Azure Active Directory / Entra ID, SailPoint, CyberArk, or equivalent enterprise platforms.

Demonstrated success delivering enterprise IAM and data security programs in highly regulated industries, specifically healthcare (HIPAA) and/or financial services (PCI-DSS, GLBA).

Proven ability to architect and implement Zero Trust, PAM, CIAM, and data governance solutions at scale in cloud-native environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

Strong working knowledge of identity protocols: OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML 2.0, SCIM, and FIDO2.

Experience with data security tooling: DLP platforms, encryption key management, tokenization, and data discovery/classification.

Demonstrated executive presence with the ability to communicate complex security concepts to C-suite, technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Experience recruiting, developing, and retaining diverse, high-performing engineering teams.

Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, CISAF.

Experience integrating acquired companies and harmonizing disparate identity environments post-M&A.

Advanced degree (MS or MBA) in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field.

Qualifications

Required:

• 12+ years of progressive experience in information security, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role managing security engineering teams.
• Deep hands-on expertise in IAM technologies: Okta, Azure Active Directory / Entra ID, SailPoint, CyberArk, or equivalent enterprise platforms.
• Demonstrated success delivering enterprise IAM and data security programs in highly regulated industries, specifically healthcare (HIPAA) and/or financial services (PCI-DSS, GLBA).
• Proven ability to architect and implement Zero Trust, PAM, CIAM, and data governance solutions at scale in cloud-native environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Strong working knowledge of identity protocols: OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML 2.0, SCIM, and FIDO2.
• Experience with data security tooling: DLP platforms, encryption key management, tokenization, and data discovery/classification.
• Demonstrated executive presence with the ability to communicate complex security concepts to C-suite, technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience recruiting, developing, and retaining diverse, high-performing engineering teams.
• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, CISAF.
• Experience integrating acquired companies and harmonizing disparate identity environments post-M&A.
• Advanced degree (MS or MBA) in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field.

Preferred:

• Experience with DevSecOps practices, security automation, and Infrastructure-as-Code security controls (Terraform, CloudFormation).

Skills

Leadership and team development, strategic planning, technical expertise, regulatory compliance, data security, identity management, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and project management.

Benefits

Base Salary Range: $185,000.00 - $234,650.00

US-based benefits include a 401k plan with employer match, flexible paid time off, holidays, parental leaves, life and disability insurance, and health benefits including medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.

Equal Employment Opportunity: Zelis is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.