Why USAA?
At USAA, our mission is to empower our members to achieve financial security through highly competitive products, exceptional service and trusted advice. We seek to be the #1 choice for the military community and their families.
Embrace a fulfilling career at USAA, where our core values – honesty, integrity, loyalty and service – define how we treat each other and our members. Be part of what truly makes us special and impactful.
We are proud to support active-duty military spouses. USAA roles may offer remote or hybrid flexibility for active-duty military spouses consistent with applicable policy and business needs.
The Opportunity
As a dedicated Director, Active Directory Engineering, you will lead the engineering organization responsible for the critical directory platforms, infrastructure, and services that enable USAA's Workforce Identity and Access Management capabilities. You will be accountable for the strategy, architecture, engineering, modernization, resiliency, and lifecycle of Active Directory and related enterprise directory services, ensuring these foundational identity capabilities remain secure, highly available, scalable, and positioned to support USAA's evolving identity and technology needs.
We offer a flexible work environment that requires an individual to be in the office 4 days per week. This position can be based in one of the following locations: San Antonio, TX, or Plano, TX. Relocation assistance is available for this position.
What you'll do:
- Lead the Active Directory Engineering organization and establish the engineering strategy and multi-year technology roadmap for Active Directory and related enterprise directory infrastructure, integrations, and services that provide foundational identity capabilities across USAA.
- Ensure the security, reliability, resiliency, availability, scalability, and recoverability of enterprise directory services by establishing engineering standards, platform health metrics, capacity planning, lifecycle management, disaster recovery, and operational readiness expectations for this critical identity infrastructure.
- Partner across Workforce IAM, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Cloud, and application engineering teams to translate identity and authentication requirements into scalable engineering capabilities, strengthening directory security, identity integration, and access controls.
- Lead the modernization and evolution of enterprise directory services, including hybrid identity architecture, Active Directory security hardening, automation, legacy dependency reduction, cloud integration, and the transition toward modern identity patterns that reduce reliance on legacy authentication and strengthen USAA's identity security posture.
- Responsible for strategic ownership of critical security domains or capabilities, develops multi-year roadmaps and/or a leader of Manager Seniors.
- Establishes and ensures compliant execution of their information security domain's short- and long-term strategic vision, strategy, goals, and metrics and governs the overall policies, standards, and procedures for their assigned information security domain.
- Directs and ensures effective operation of an enterprise information security domain including capacity, resilience and dependability capabilities and how changes in conditions, operations, or the environment will affect the system's operation.
- Develops, reviews and communicates information security risk management policies and procedures in partnership with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and other senior leaders to ensure appropriateness and adequacy versus industry best practices and regulatory requirements.
- Interfaces with external regulators to represent USAA in discussions regarding their specific information security domain.
- Oversees the continuous monitoring of cybersecurity activities and alerts senior management to potential risks, compliance issues, and operational inefficiencies.
- Develops, designs, and delivers a sustainable governance and assurance model across multiple domains and the Enterprise.
- Identifies, monitors and evaluates operational solutions to reduce information security risk, meet compliance requirements and increase enterprise workforce efficiency, business agility and workforce scalability.
- Promotes information security awareness across the enterprise and with the external security community.
- Serves as financial steward for the organization and manages manpower and budgets to ensure they cost-effectively meet the needs of the organization.
- Builds and oversees a team of employees for assigned functional area through ongoing execution of recruiting, development, retention, coaching and support, performance management, and managerial activities.
- Ensures risks associated with business activities are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures.
What you have:
- Bachelor's degree in Information Security, Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Administration, Information Systems/Management, or related field; OR 4 years of relevant education and/or experience.
- 8 years of related information security experience in one or more domains, e.g.: Cyber Security, Identity and Access Management, Information Assurance and Governance, Operational Risk Management and/or Information Technology to include significant accountability for projects, programs, processes, or policies.
- 3 years of direct team lead, supervisor, or management experience in an Information Security or Information Technology domain.
- 4 years of researching, designing or implementing technology, information security or cybersecurity solutions in a large financial institution or large enterprise information security program with a proven track record of delivering results in compliance with federal/state/regulatory information security and risk management policies, standards, and guidelines.
- Expert knowledge of relevant regulations and standards related to risk management and information security, e.g.: FFIEC, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool, NIST Cybersecurity Framework and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.
- Strong knowledge of security technologies to include cryptography, authentication, authorization, and controls.
- Strong Knowledge of IT risks and experience implementing security solutions.
- Knowledge of threats, vulnerabilities, attack methods and countermeasures for web-based applications, networks, and cyber security solutions.
- Demonstrated financial acumen involving budgets, forecasting, and executing on the budgets for applicable information security, cybersecurity, or technology support function.
- Expert level of business acumen in the areas of business operations, risk management, industry practices and emerging trends.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate technical analyses to a non-technical audience.
What sets you apart:
- 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in Identity and Access Management (IAM), cybersecurity, or enterprise infrastructure.
- 5+ years leading large-scale identity engineering or authentication organizations.
- Deep expertise with Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID.
- Experience leading OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, and modern federation architectures.
- Strong understanding of Keycloak, Layer7 API Gateway, and enterprise authentication platforms.
- Experience implementing workload identity, machine identity, and service-to-service authentication strategies.
- Knowledge of policy-based authorization frameworks, including Open Policy Agent (OPA).
- Experience driving Zero Trust architecture and identity-centric security initiatives.
- Demonstrated success leading cloud identity transformations across hybrid environments.
- Strong understanding of cybersecurity frameworks, regulatory requirements, and audit controls.
- Proven ability to build high-performing engineering and security teams.
- Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, Azure Security Engineer, or equivalent preferred.
Compensation range: The salary range for this position is: $164,780.00 - $314,960.00.
USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role. Please do not apply for this role if at any time (now or in the future) you will need immigration support (i.e., H-1B, TN, STEM OPT Training Plans, etc.).
Compensation: USAA has an effective process for assessing market data and establishing ranges to ensure we remain competitive. You are paid within the salary range based on your experience and market data of the position. The actual salary for this role may vary by location.
Employees may be eligible for pay incentives based on overall corporate and individual performance and at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors.
The above description reflects the details considered necessary to describe the principal functions of the job and should not be construed as a detailed description of all the work requirements that may be performed in the job.
Benefits: At USAA our employees enjoy best-in-class benefits to support their physical, financial, and emotional wellness. These benefits include comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, 401(k), pension, life insurance, parental benefits, adoption assistance, paid time off program with paid holidays plus 16 paid volunteer hours, and various wellness programs. Additionally, our career path planning and continuing education assists employees with their professional goals.
For more details on our outstanding benefits, visit our benefits page on USAAjobs.com.
Applications for this position are accepted on an ongoing basis, this posting will remain open until the position is filled. Thus, interested candidates are encouraged to apply the same day they view this posting.
USAA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.
