SME - IAM Policy Authorization Engineering

Job Summary

Join Standard Chartered's Identity and Access Management (IAM) Authorisation Security Team in a pivotal role as Lead - IAM Authorisation (AuthZ) Policy Engineering. This position is integral to the implementation and governance of advanced authorisation policies designed to secure enterprise operations. You will translate complex business, regulatory, risk, and security requirements into machine-consumable, enforceable policy artefacts that cover a broad range of identities including human users, machines, privileged accounts, digital agents, and emerging AI entities.

As a specialist in policy-based access control (PBAC), you will lead the integration of this framework into our security infrastructure, ensuring our authorisation solutions are precise, auditable, and scalable across hybrid enterprise environments. This role champions a disciplined engineering approach to authorisation-ensuring traceability and testability from policy specification through enforcement. You will collaborate with diverse technical teams and stakeholders to develop robust access governance, specifically focusing on agent delegation, trust boundaries, Identity Provider (IdP) integration, and continuous delivery of policy lifecycle management.

Ideal candidates are passionate about innovation in cyber security, eager to address challenges related to AI governance and secure identity management in a dynamic financial services context. Join us in shaping the future of secure access controls and digital trust at Standard Chartered.

Key Responsibilities

In this leadership role, you will be responsible for architecting and managing enterprise-wide authorisation policies based on Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC) principles. Your key accountabilities include:

• Designing, engineering, and governing scalable authorisation policies aligned with business objectives, regulatory mandates, and security standards.
• Translating complex risk and compliance requirements into automated, executable policy artefacts that enable consistent and enforceable access decisions.
• Developing and maintaining detailed machine-readable policy components such as roles, user attributes, contextual conditions, constraints, and delegation protocols.
• Creating reusable policy templates and comprehensive reference frameworks that standardise policy deployment and reduce implementation complexity.
• Ensuring full lifecycle traceability across all policy artefacts, enforcement points, decision logs, and audit trails to support compliance and incident investigations.
• Driving semantic integrity across policy ecosystems by eliminating contradictions and ambiguities in policy rules.
• Establishing governance models for delegated authorization involving AI agents, service principals, and machine identities, ensuring accountability and trust boundary enforcement.
• Implementing security guardrails to prevent privilege escalation, policy circumvention, and to manage delegation securely.

Skills and Experience

Essential Skills and Experience

• Comprehensive experience in Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, with proven expertise in designing and implementing Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC) models.
• Proficient in Policy-as-Code methodologies, enabling automated and version-controlled policy deployment and validation.
• Hands-on knowledge of OAuth frameworks and on-behalf-of (OBO) delegation models.
• Experience integrating Identity Providers (IdPs) and Identity Governance solutions within complex enterprise environments.
• Familiarity with authorization controls specifically applied to emerging agentic AI environments.

Desirable Competencies

• Ability to translate high-level security and compliance requirements into precise policy statements.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills to work cross-functionally with technical teams, stakeholders, and regulators.
• Experience in architecting scalable governance frameworks enabling secure and auditable delegation of privileges.

Motivations

• Driven by solving emerging authorization challenges, shaping agentic Identity, policy-driven governance, and enabling secure innovation. Thrives in environments requiring deep technical expertise, stakeholder engagement, and measurable improvements in security and operational effectiveness.

Qualifications

Experience Requirements: 10-12+ years of progressive experience in Cyber Security and Identity & Access Management, demonstrating leadership in authorisation strategy development, policy engineering, and policy-based access control (PBAC) implementations. Proven track record in architecting enterprise-scale authorization frameworks accommodating human users, machines, and AI agents.

Educational Qualifications: A Bachelor’s degree or higher in Cyber Security, Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business Administration, or related fields is required.

Relevant security certifications are highly valued and may include CISSP, Microsoft SC-100/SC-300, CSPO/SAFe agile certifications, or recognised cloud security credentials such as AZ-500 or CCSP.

Strong familiarity with emerging technologies including Agentic AI authorization, trust engineering principles, and leading enterprise identity platforms will significantly enhance a candidate’s suitability.

Language Proficiency: Professional proficiency in English is essential for effective communication across global teams and stakeholders.

About Standard Chartered

We're a global bank connecting clients to our differentiated network, offering growth opportunities in the world's most dynamic markets. Our strategy, which combines cross-border capabilities and leading wealth management expertise, helps us deliver our purpose - to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity.

Over our 170-year history, and across a unique geographical footprint connecting Asia, Africa and the Middle East to each other and the world, we've built a bank like no other, with diverse capabilities and partnerships that set us apart.

What We Offer

• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions, and geographies.
• In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.
• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global employee assistance programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and self-help toolkits.
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual, and digital learning.

Visit our careers website to learn more about us: www.sc.com/careers.