Senior Principal, IAM Directory Services

Location: Bengaluru
Department: Security

The Senior Principal, IAM Directory Services is the senior technical authority for the security, resilience and continuous hardening of GSK’s enterprise directory services.

The role leads a defined area of the IAM Directory Services capability and ensures that Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID and the supporting identity synchronisation layer are designed, operated and improved using secure-by-design and defence-in-depth principles.

Key responsibilities:

• Act as the senior technical authority for the security architecture, hardening and operational integrity of Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID and associated directory and synchronization services.
• Lead a defined area of the Directory Services security capability, including its delivery roadmap, technical standards, risk position and measurable security outcomes.
• Embed secure-by-design principles into new directory services, migrations, integrations and material changes.
• Design, implement and maintain a tiered administrative security model.
• Own the architecture and security controls for privileged administration.
• Define and maintain directory security policies, configuration baselines, Group Policy standards and technical guardrails.
• Continuously harden the directory estate by reducing attack paths and legacy exposure.
• Lead the Directory Services response to penetration tests, red-team exercises, vulnerability assessments and audit findings.
• Provide directory security leadership during incidents and investigations.
• Own monitoring requirements and security use cases for privileged changes, authentication anomalies, directory replication, policy changes, persistence techniques and indicators of compromise.
• Maintain a robust security assurance programme.
• Own secure backup and recovery requirements for directory services.
• Provide technical governance for domains, forests, tenants, trusts, federation and identity synchronisation.
• Manage delivery against the capability and security roadmap.
• Represent Directory Services in cyber security governance, architecture review, risk, audit and cross-functional forums.
• Develop team capability through coaching, technical review, secure engineering practices, knowledge transfer and structured feedback.

Basic Qualifications:

• Degree in a relevant discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated enterprise-scale experience engineering, securing and operating Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID.
• Deep practical knowledge of Active Directory security architecture, attack paths, authentication, authorisation, delegation, trusts, Group Policy, privileged groups and directory replication.
• Hands-on experience implementing directory hardening, tiered administration, privileged access controls, hardened administrative workstations and bastion or jump-host patterns.
• Experience defining, maintaining and assuring security configuration baselines, technical policies, standards and exception processes.
• Proven experience responding to penetration tests, red-team findings, vulnerabilities, incidents or audit observations and driving remediation through to validated closure.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Deep hands-on experience hardening complex multi-domain or multi-forest Active Directory environments and hybrid identity services.
• Experience applying recognised directory security guidance and translating it into enforceable enterprise standards and measurable controls.
• Experience with privileged access management, just-in-time administration, credential isolation, attack-path management and administrative tiering.