Director, Identity and Access Management; IAM

Position: Director, Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Bring more to life.

Are you ready to accelerate your potential and make a real difference within life sciences, diagnostics and biotechnology?

At Cepheid, one of Danaher's ()  15+ operating companies, our work saves lives-and we're all united by a shared commitment to innovate for tangible impact.

You'll thrive in a culture of belonging where you and your unique viewpoint matter. And by harnessing Danaher's system of continuous improvement, you help turn ideas into impact - innovating at the speed of life.

At Cepheid, we are passionate about improving health care through fast, accurate, molecular diagnostic systems and tests. As a member of our team, you'll get to make an immediate, measurable impact on a global scale, within an environment that fosters career growth and development. Our mission drives us to develop groundbreaking solutions for the world's most complex health challenges. Together, we bring MORE change to the world.

Learn about the Danaher Business System ()  which makes everything possible.

The Director, Identity and Access Management (IAM) is responsible for defining, governing, and evolving the enterprise-wide technology architecture to enable business strategy, scalability, security, and regulatory compliance. Shifting from traditional tactical operations to proactive strategic oversight, this role will architect a future-proof identity fabric across Human Identities, Machine/Non-Human Identities, Shared Accounts, and Privileged Accounts.

The Director acts as a strategic advisor to business and IT leaders, serves as an innovation catalyst driving change across corporate boundaries, and leads a centralized governance function to improve Cepheid's IAM maturity. This position reports to the I&O Leader and is part of the I&O group located in Sunnyvale / Santa Clara.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to:

+ IAM Strategy & Visionary

Roadmap:

Develop the overarching IAM charter, strategy, and investment roadmaps, transforming the team into a proactive business-enablement partner that aligns identity controls with business value.

+ Identity Portfolio Optimization & Rationalization:
Orchestrate the modernization and continuous rationalization of the identity technology portfolio, evaluating and improving capability zones across Human Identities, Machine/Non-Human Identities, Shared Accounts, and Privileged Access Management (PAM).

+ Cross-Domain Orchestration & Business Enablement:
Partner proactively with cross-functional platform teams, Dev Ops, cybersecurity, HR, and compliance to design scalable, decentralized identity patterns that integrate directly into continuous deployment pipelines.

+ Cross-Operating Company Innovation & Influence:
Partner with stakeholders across Operating company boundaries to shape technology demand and actively drive modern identity standards and best practices at the broader Danaher level.

+ AI-Assisted Orchestration & Guardrails:
Assess emerging AI trends to safely integrate agentic automation into workflows, shifting routine execution to autonomous systems while maintaining critical human technical oversight and ethical decision boundaries.

+ Identity Architecture Design & System Resilience Engineering:
Shape technology demand, evaluate build-versus-buy infrastructure decisions, and proactively lead advanced resilience testing-including simulating identity system failures and directory outages (Chaos Engineering)-to safeguard a highly regulated, distributed ecosystem.

The essential requirements of the job include:

+

Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.

+

Experience:

10+ years of experience in enterprise, business, solution, platform, or security identity architecture.

+ Strategic Acumen:
Ability to balance the long-term architectural design with short-term operational baselines and organizational goals.

+ Influence & Communication:
Ability to influence without authority and communicate complex technical trade-offs effectively with executive, business, and cross-functional technical stakeholders.

+ Emerging Technology Proficiency:
Understanding of existing, new, and emerging identity paradigms, such as generative AI applications, automated agent orchestration, and graph identity data modeling.

Travel, Motor Vehicle Record & Physical/Environment Requirements:

+ Ability to travel 10% of the time globally

It would be a plus if you also possess previous experience in:

+ Regulated & Distributed Environments:
Designing secure systems with privacy and compliance in mind within heavily regulated environments (such as life sciences, FDA, or biotechnology spaces).

+ Modern Protocol & Tools Proficiency:
Hands-on familiarity with deep identity protocol integration logic (OIDC, SAML, OAuth, SCIM).

Cepheid, a Danaher operating company, offers a broad array of comprehensive, competitive benefit programs that add value to our lives. Whether it's a health care program or paid time off, our programs contribute to life…