Lead Engineer - Authentication Engineering - Hybrid in Lisburn

At Allstate, great things happen when our people work together to protect families and their belongings from life's uncertainties. For more than 90 years, our innovative drive has kept us a step ahead of our customers' evolving needs.

We are seeking a highly technical and innovative Lead Engineer, Authentication Engineering to lead the design, implementation, and advancement of enterprise authentication platforms. Multiple Managing Engineers for authentication teams will report to this role. This role will provide technical leadership for authentication solutions, including directory infrastructure, multi-factor authentication (MFA), PKI, privileged access management and vaulting solutions and an in-house developed application for password and MFA management. The successful candidate will partner closely with Product Management, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Engineering, Application Teams, and Operations to deliver secure, scalable, and resilient authentication capabilities that align with strategic directions including AI enablement, Zero Trust, Infrastructure as Code, and automation.

Key responsibilities:

• Partner with Authentication Lead Product Manager for creation of strategy, roadmaps, prioritization, and implementation of solutions.
• Lead the strategy, architecture, and engineering of enterprise authentication solutions, ensuring they meet business needs while delivering a secure, seamless user experience.
• Design, implement, and modernize authentication solutions, including MFA, PKI, SSO, privileged access management, vaulting, and cloud-native authentication platforms to enable Zero Trust capabilities including passwordless, phishing-resistant authentication, Just-In-Time (JIT) and Just-Enough (JEA) access.
• Drive increased automation and Infrastructure as Code including test driven development practices for validation and control testing.
• Lead large-scale authentication migrations and technology transformations, while continuously improving platforms to reduce user friction and increase adoption.
• Partner with security, infrastructure, cloud, application, and AI teams to deliver scalable, resilient authentication services and support security integration into application automation, AI workflows, and agentic AI capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership and people development by coaching Managing Engineers, leading technical product design reviews, and providing direction for engineering best practices.
• Influence partners to prioritize for enterprise benefit and risk reduction and assist in driving the adoption of technology solutions that leverage existing patterns, practices, and reference architectures.
• Strengthen the organization's security posture by implementing and enhancing controls to address gaps and vulnerabilities identified through audits, assessments, red team, penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and proactive threat modelling.
• Own the reliability, resiliency, and operational excellence of authentication services by defining and achieving SLOs, improving service availability and performance, instrumenting and enhancing observability, and leading incident response efforts to reduce MTTR.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends, establish engineering standards and best practices, and provide technical leadership across authentication domains.

Essential Skills:

• All applicants must demonstrate they have a legal right to work in the UK for employment at Allstate. Allstate is not providing sponsorship for this vacancy.
• A minimum of 5 years of Information Technology or Engineering experience with authentication engineering accountabilities.
• A minimum of 3 years managing people.
• Experience leading enterprise large-scale projects.
• Strong expertise with Active Directory and Entra ID.
• Experience implementing and securing PKI solutions.
• Experience implementing cloud-based solutions (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP).
• Experience with automated deployments (Terraform, Ansible, GitHub, Jenkins, etc.).

Desirable Skills:

• Experience with Privileged Access Management and Vaulting solutions (CyberArk, Hashicorp, Azure Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, GCP Secrets Manager, etc.).
• Experience with MFA authenticators (Duo, MS Authenticator, etc.) and hardware tokens/smart cards for TOTP, FIDO2, PIV (Duo, Yubikey, Thales, etc.).
• Strong knowledge of authentication protocols such as SAML, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, Kerberos, LDAP, certificate-based authentication, etc.
• Understanding of authentication attack techniques, threat actors, and exploitation methods and controls to mitigate.
• Scripting experience (PowerShell, Python, etc.).
• Understanding of Full Stack Java development.
• Understanding security standards and compliance requirements (NIST, ISO, PCI, HIPPA, Sox, etc.).
• Experience leading global teams.

Supervisory Responsibilities: This job has supervisory duties.

Why join us?

Allstate NI is proud to be Allstate's European Digital Centre of Excellence, a hub for innovation and engineering excellence. We're recent winners of Best Place to Work in IT (100+ employees) and Best Use of Cloud Services at the Belfast Telegraph IT Awards, and we've been recognised for our community and sustainability impact with Platinum in the Northern Ireland Environmental Benchmarking Survey.

We're a product-driven, cloud-first organisation delivering real outcomes through modern technology, a digital product-centric talent model, and a culture rooted in engineering excellence. Our teams work in cross-functional structures, guided by an outcome-based delivery approach that accelerates speed, agility, and value.

We also invest in you. At Allstate NI, your career growth matters. You'll have access to our Continuous Learning Hub, designed to support skills development and professional advancement through tailored learning paths, certifications, and mentoring opportunities. Whether you're deepening technical expertise or exploring leadership roles, we provide the tools and support to help you thrive.

What do you get in return?

As well as receiving a competitive annual salary, our reward package includes:

• Corporate bonus scheme
• Pension scheme
• Annual performance-related pay reviews
• Life assurance and income protection
• Flexible working options
• Hybrid working
• Private medical and dental insurance
• Access to an employee assistance programme
• Discounted gym membership
• Two paid volunteering days each year
• Cycle to work scheme

Be part of a high-performing, socially responsible organisation where your work has purpose, and your growth is supported every step of the way.

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