Director, Identity and Access Management (IAM

Overview

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. This role shifts from tactical operations to proactive strategic oversight, architecting a future‑proof identity fabric across Human Identities, Machine/Non‑Human Identities, Shared Accounts, and Privileged Accounts. The director serves as a strategic advisor to business and IT leaders, drives cross‑company innovation, and leads centralized governance to improve Cepheid’s IAM maturity.

This position reports to the I&O Leader and is located in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Shape technology demand, evaluate build‑versus‑buy infrastructure decisions, and lead advanced resilience testing—including simulating identity system failures and directory outages (chaos engineering)—to safeguard a highly regulated, distributed ecosystem.

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• Experience: 10+ years in enterprise, business, solution, platform, or security identity architecture.
• Strategic Acumen: Ability to balance 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 &
  
  Physical Requirements:
  
  Ability to travel up to 10% of the time globally.

• Experience designing secure systems with privacy and compliance in highly regulated environments (e.g., life sciences, FDA, biotechnology).
• Hands‑on familiarity with deep identity protocol integration (OIDC, SAML, OAuth, SCIM).

The annual salary range for this role is $200,000 – $230,000. This range is a good faith estimate and may be modified in the future. The role is eligible for bonus/incentive pay. Additional benefits include paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance, and a 401(k) plan to eligible employees.
Note: No amount of pay is considered wages or compensation until earned, vested, and determinable.

Danaher Corporation and all Danaher Companies are committed to equal opportunity regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, marital status, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristics protected by law. All employment is decided on merit and eligibility. We comply with federal and state disability laws and provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities.