IAM Team Lead in Southampton

The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self‑driven individual and to take full ownership of everything around you. From building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and ensuring all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers.

We have a hybrid approach to working. Our preference is that you are located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we can interact and collaborate in person. In Technology, you are asked to attend the office a minimum of one day per week.

We are looking for someone to develop and deliver managerial and leadership skills within the Cyber Security group. We value people being engaged and caring about customers and the code they write or the business systems and processes they develop to make Starling Secure.

• Lead, mentor and develop the IAM team, building technical capability and strong stakeholder relationships.
• Contribute to and execute the IAM roadmap with the Information Security Lead, ensuring alignment with business, compliance and security objectives.
• Oversee the full IAM lifecycle including identity governance, privileged access management, authentication and authorisation.
• Ensure access controls, policies, processes and procedures meet regulatory, audit and security requirements.
• Drive modernisation initiatives such as zero‑trust, adaptive authentication and cloud‑based IAM.
• Collaborate with the wider business functions to embed IAM across enterprise services.
• Provide reporting and insights into IAM programme health, risks and progress for senior leadership.
• Organise and manage the team to ensure operational coverage and that staff are appropriately skilled.
• Responsible for the delivery of resilient Identity and Access Management services to the Bank, covering processes and technologies for Identity Management, Authentication and Identity Governance.
• Responsible for the processes and controls governing access to COTS and bespoke Banking tooling, including Role‑Based Access Control.
• Collaborate with engineering and business teams to facilitate delivery, including review and analysis of proposed technical solutions and business processes to identify appropriate security controls.
• Provide input and guidance to security‑related technical architecture and design decisions.
• Conduct code review of features and critical security components.
• Advise on remediation of security issues and processes to address root causes.
• Develop policies, standards, processes, guidelines and documentation for consumption by internal teams.
• Triage and manage IAM security events, including participation in IAM security incident management where necessary.

Interviewing is a two‑way process designed to give you and us the best opportunity to learn about each other. The process typically includes:

• General interview and role‑based competency with Line Manager and Director of InfoSec.
• Technical interview with our Information Security Director.
• Final interview with Leadership (CISO).
• Hands‑on exercise demonstrating experience with enterprise‑grade security tooling.
• Discussion of experience delivering technology solutions in a highly regulated environment.
• Presentation of experience in IAM leadership with end‑to‑end exposure to identity governance and access management.
• Review of strong knowledge of IAM principles and frameworks (RBAC, PAM, SSO, MFA, Zero Trust).
• Demonstration of the ability to lead and inspire cross‑functional teams.
• Design, development (including scripting and configuration) and continuous improvement of security solutions.
• Track record of delivery and service improvement.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including ability to explain complex security concepts to technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Strong general Cyber Security domain knowledge, including Cloud security.

• Demonstrated leadership in managing a technical team, providing support across operations, projects and engineering.
• Experience implementing IAM solutions in hybrid or multi‑cloud environments.
• Experience designing and delivering Identity Management Systems (e.g. Okta, EntraID, Ping).
• Experience designing and delivering Identity Governance Systems (e.g. Sailpoint, Saviynt, ConductorOne).
• Experience with automation and developer tooling (CI/CD) and Infrastructure as Code.
• Understanding of best‑practice credential management practices.
• Understanding of modern authentication technologies, their application and strengths/drawbacks.
• Strong identity knowledge, including Privileged Access Management, Role‑Based Access Control and Identity Governance.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

• Programming skills (e.g. Python, Go, Java, Rust).
• Experience with security control frameworks such as NIST CSF, CIS benchmarks, ISO27001, SOC2.

• 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you).
• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday.
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off.
• 16 hours paid volunteering time a year.
• Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme.
• Life insurance at 4x your salary & group income protection.
• Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care.
• Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr & Mrs Smith and Peloton.
• Generous family‑friendly policies.
• Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks.
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing.