# Principal IAM Engineer at Zendesk

Zendesk is hiring a Principal IAM Engineer in Austin, United States. It pays $193k-$289k a year and Level rates it Little AI ●○○○; you can [apply on Zendesk](https://jobsbylevel.com/go/3f8cb517-f611-4e76-9d36-833dddf80d25?utm_medium=ai-agent).

AI Level 1, AI centrality 29 out of 100. Austin, Texas, United States of America.

## Details

- Company: [Zendesk](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/zendesk)
- AI level: AI Level 1 (score 29 out of 100)
- Location: Austin, Texas, United States of America
- Salary: $193k-$289k
- Posted: November 11, 2026
- Apply: https://jobsbylevel.com/go/3f8cb517-f611-4e76-9d36-833dddf80d25?utm_medium=ai-agent
- Free CV review for this job: https://jobsbylevel.com/cv-review?job=principal-iam-engineer-at-zendesk-f1a65a

## Description

Job Description About the role We are looking for a principal individual contributor in IT Engineering to build and advance our Identity and Access Management (IAM) function for human and agent identities. You will personally deliver complex engineering work, coach the team and align technical and business partners on a shared identity vision and roadmap. This role combines engineering, architecture and business systems analysis. Strong communication and stakeholder management are essential. You will turn ambiguous business needs into clear requirements and practical designs, explain trade-offs, and help teams agree on decisions when standards or priorities conflict. What you will do Engineering: Design, build, test and operate complex IAM solutions across identity lifecycle automation, authentication, provisioning, integrations and access governance. Apply SAML, OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 and SCIM appropriately, and validate edge cases and recovery before and after changes. Automation: Build maintainable automation with APIs and scripting, using version control, peer review and automated tests. Use infrastructure as code where appropriate to make identity configuration repeatable and reviewable. Function Building: Build the IAM function by establishing service ownership, engineering standards, operating practices and a prioritized roadmap. Create reusable architecture and integration patterns, support their adoption and measure service reliability and business outcomes. Architecture: Define target and reference architectures for identity services, system integrations and authorization models. Document design decisions and assumptions, evaluate build-versus-buy options, and balance security risk, cost, scalability and reliability. Turn architectural direction into sequenced implementation and migration plans. Review proposed designs with engineering, Security and application owners, identifying integration boundaries, failure modes and dependencies before implementation. Identity Strategy: Develop a shared direction for human and non-human identities, including service, workload and agent identities. Address ownership, authentication, authorization, scoped delegation, identity and credential lifecycles, revocation and auditability. Work with business and technical partners to agree priorities and sequence delivery. Governance: Partner with Security and business owners to define least-privilege access, roles and entitlements. Support access reviews, remediation and audit evidence that demonstrate how access is approved, changed and removed. Reliability: Improve identity service monitoring and troubleshoot incidents through root-cause analysis. Maintain runbooks and tested rollback and recovery procedures, and turn operational findings into engineering improvements. Discovery: Lead discovery workshops with business and technical stakeholders. Map current and future processes, identify exceptions and dependencies, and reconcile competing needs. Translate business outcomes into functional and non-functional requirements, keeping them traceable through architecture, delivery and testable acceptance criteria. Acceptance Testing: Partner with users on user acceptance testing, validate that solutions meet agreed outcomes and resolve gaps before release. Explain technical constraints in business terms, make trade-offs explicit and incorporate feedback into process and service improvements. Coaching: Coach engineers and business systems analysts through pairing, design reviews and reusable guidance. Help others take on more complex work independently and reduce reliance on individual experts. Conflict Resolution: Resolve cross-team disagreements constructively. Assess proposals against IAM standards and business outcomes, explain risks and trade-offs, and negotiate viable alternatives. Document exceptions and escalate to agreed decision owners when needed. What you bring Delivery: Demonstrated hands-on delivery of complex IAM solutions,

The description is cut here. Read the full offer: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/principal-iam-engineer-at-zendesk-f1a65a

Source: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/principal-iam-engineer-at-zendesk-f1a65a

## Cite this page

Level. https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/principal-iam-engineer-at-zendesk-f1a65a.

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