Lead Engineer – Authentication Engineering – Hybrid

At Allstate in Northern Ireland, we're not just keeping pace — we're setting it. As Allstate, great things happen when our people work together to protect families and their belongings from life’s uncertainties. Your role in the team is to lead the design, implementation, and advancement of enterprise authentication platforms.

We are seeking a highly technical and innovative Lead Engineer, Authentication Engineering. This role will provide technical leadership for authentication solutions, including directory infrastructure, multi-factor authentication (MFA), PKI, privileged access management, and vaulting solutions.

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.
• 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.
• Provide technical leadership and people development by coaching Managing Engineers and leading technical product design reviews.
• Influence partners to prioritize for enterprise benefit and risk reduction.
• Strengthen the organization’s security posture by implementing and enhancing controls to address gaps and vulnerabilities.
• Own the reliability, resiliency, and operational excellence of authentication services.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends, establish engineering standards and best practices.

All applicants must demonstrate they have a legal right to work in the UK for employment at Allstate. A minimum of 5 years of Information Technology or Engineering experience with authentication engineering accountabilities is required, along with a minimum of 3 years managing people.

Skills: Strong expertise with Active Directory and Entra ID, experience implementing and securing PKI solutions, experience with automated deployments, experience with Privileged Access Management and Vaulting solutions, experience with MFA authenticators, strong knowledge of authentication protocols, understanding of authentication attack techniques, and understanding of Full Stack Java development.

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 and Best Use of Cloud Services at the Belfast Telegraph IT Awards.

What do you get in return? As well as receiving a competitive annual salary, our reward package includes annual performance-related pay reviews, life assurance and income protection, flexible working options, private medical and dental insurance, access to an employee assistance programme, discounted gym membership, and two paid volunteering days each year.