Lead Identity System Engineer

Summary

The Lead Identity Systems Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and securing enterprise identity and access management infrastructure that enables reliable authentication, authorization, and access management across hybrid environments. Engineers in this family ensure that users, systems, and applications are authenticated, authorized, and protected in alignment with security standards, regulatory requirements, and business needs.

Job Description

The Lead Identity Systems Engineer is a leadership role that combines deep technical expertise with operational oversight, ensuring that enterprise identity platforms are secure, scalable, and reliable across on-premises and cloud environments. This position leads the deployment, configuration, and lifecycle management of Active Directory, Entra ID, PKI, and hybrid identity services, while overseeing governance processes such as access reviews, audits, and compliance reporting.

The Lead Identity Systems Engineer defines operational standards, playbooks, and escalation paths, serving as the technical lead for identity projects, integrations, and cross-platform authentication initiatives. Responsibilities include enforcing least privilege, securing sensitive systems, managing certificate lifecycles, and automating provisioning and access governance workflows.

In addition, this role partners with Information Security leadership to align identity services with organizational policy, mentors and develops engineering team members, and monitors operational KPIs to drive efficiency, resilience, and continuous improvement.

Works under limited guidance due to previous experience/breadth of knowledge of processes and organizational knowledge. Acts independently to determine methods and procedures on new assignments. Regularly presented with new assignments and projects that require the application of independent judgement and interpretation of policies and practices. Consistently checks the work of other team members and provides performance feedback.

Assist the team Manager with the following: Adherence with Sanford Health policies and procedures is maintained by the team (e.g., timecards are submitted on time, etc.), prioritize work to all team members, assign team members to projects based on experience, workload, and growth opportunities, and ensures deadlines for projects are met.

This role requires deep technical expertise in Active Directory, Entra ID, authentication protocols, Identity Governance Administration (IGA), Privileged Access Management (PAM) and PKI with a strong focus on information security, compliance, strong problem-solving skills, a security-first mindset, and least-privilege enforcement. The Lead Identity Systems Engineer ensures the organization's identity platforms are resilient, scalable, and secure to support business operations and protect sensitive data. The Lead Identity Systems Engineer will work closely with cross-functional IT, application, and security teams to ensure alignment with business objectives, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices.