IAM Architect (SC Cleared) - Permanent - Taunton, UK

The role requires someone who can set direction with senior stakeholders, provide clear design authority, and work closely with engineering, data and service teams on detailed technical issues. This includes identity schemas, attributes, data flows, APIs, microservices, integration patterns, workflow behaviour, platform configuration and live-service supportability.

The successful candidate will help ensure the platform remains stable, supportable and capable of evolving over time, while reducing avoidable complexity across processes, integrations and technical components.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Leadership

Own the end-to-end architecture across development, data and service support workstreams.

Provide technical direction across identity workflows, life cycle processes, integrations, data flows, platform behaviour and operational supportability.

Act as the senior architecture point of contact for delivery teams, service teams, suppliers and customer stakeholders.

Maintain architectural coherence across live-service change, backlog delivery, technical debt reduction and roadmap activity.

Ensure design decisions are pragmatic, supportable and aligned to business value.

Identity Platform Architecture

Lead architecture across enterprise identity and access management capabilities.

Provide oversight of identity life cycle processes including onboarding, profile changes, role and access changes, recertification, leaver handling, audit and reporting.

Understand complex identity integrations across directories, authoritative sources, workflow systems, cloud-hosted services and downstream platforms.

Support simplification of identity journeys, data feeds, interfaces and platform components.

Identify opportunities to reduce avoidable customisation and use existing platform capability where appropriate.

Technical Depth and Design Ownership

Understand and challenge detailed identity designs, including schemas, attributes, data models, workflow rules, provisioning logic and integration behaviour.

Review APIs, data feeds, directory integrations, microservices, ETL/transformation logic and platform configuration.

Work with developers, data specialists, DevOps engineers and service teams to diagnose complex issues and make practical design decisions.

Provide architecture support during defect analysis, root-cause investigation, service support and backlog refinement.

Move comfortably between architecture diagrams, backlog items, logs, schemas, interface specifications and implementation detail.

Identify where existing components should be retained, simplified, consolidated, retired or replaced with simpler patterns.

Ensure architectural decisions are technically sound, supportable in live service, and understood by the teams who need to build and run them.

Platform Improvement and Roadmap

Review existing platform complexity, including interfaces, microservices, custom components and integration patterns.

Shape practical options for reducing complexity and improving supportability.

Support API-based integration patterns where they reduce complexity and improve resilience.

Work with cloud/platform specialists to identify monitoring, resilience, containerisation and operational improvement opportunities.

Provide architectural input into future identity patterns, including Microsoft Entra-aligned options where appropriate.

Reduce complexity without driving unnecessary re-engineering or business disruption.

Service Supportability

Work closely with Service Operations, L2/L3 support, Data, Dev and DevOps teams to improve ownership and reduce dependency on specialist intervention.

Support the development of runbooks, operational models, support routes and knowledge-transfer material.

Ensure the architecture is supportable by BAU, not just deliverable by project teams.

Help distinguish between application, data, infrastructure, supplier and service-operation ownership.

Support incident and problem analysis where architectural input is required.

Essential Experience

Strong enterprise identity and access management experience.

Proven experience as a lead or senior architect on complex live platforms.

Experience working in secure government, public sector or similarly regulated environments.

Strong understanding of identity life cycle, access management, workflow, audit, governance and integration patterns.

Demonstrable ability to work at detailed technical level across identity schemas, data flows, APIs, microservices, platform configuration and live-service support issues.

Experience working across application development, data, infrastructure, service operations and supplier teams.

Ability to simplify complex technical landscapes and make pragmatic architecture decisions.

Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.

Active SC clearance.

Desirable Experience

Experience with enterprise IAM platforms such as OpenText/NetIQ, SailPoint, Microsoft Entra, ForgeRock, CyberArk, Okta or similar.

Microsoft Entra/Azure AD/M365 identity integration experience.

AWS-hosted application or platform experience.

API gateway, LDAP, directory services, data feeds and enterprise integration experience.

Experience with microservices, ETL patterns, workflow engines or complex integration platforms.

Experience of service transition, BAU readiness and operational handover.

Experience modernising or simplifying Legacy-to-cloud services.

Familiarity with secure-by-design principles, auditability and regulated-service operation.

This is the most important role. Immediate start

We need an established senior architect who can take ownership of architecture across the Identity service. This must be someone with real technical leadership, not a slideware/governance-only architect. They need to guide the team, take accountability and get into the detail when required.

Strong enterprise IAM experience is essential. Exposure to SailPoint, Okta, NetIQ/OpenText, Microsoft Entra or similar IAM platforms would be relevant. NetIQ is useful but not a deal-breaker.

The candidate must be credible with engineers, architects, data specialists, Service Operations and senior stakeholders. They should be comfortable across schemas, data flows, APIs, microservices, identity life cycle, integrations, platform configuration and live-service supportability.

Look for

• Established senior/lead architect profile
• Strong enterprise IAM experience
• Secure government/public sector/regulated experience
• Technical depth across identity platforms, integrations, schemas and APIs
• Ability to simplify complex platforms and make pragmatic decisions
• Credibility with engineers and senior stakeholders