IAM Engineering Leader

Manoj Kottam

Securing Identities at Enterprise Scale

CISSP • MBA • MS Computer Science

Security and IAM engineering leader with 20+ years building enterprise identity platforms at scale — currently driving HEB's multi-year IAM modernization for 180K+ employees and 900+ apps, and advancing Zero Trust across workforce, privileged, and non-human identities.

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Securing the Future of Identity

I lead security and IAM engineering teams to modernize enterprise identity platforms at scale — consolidating fragmented IDPs onto Okta, advancing Zero Trust across workforce, privileged, and non-human identities, and championing a “Security as Code” culture that turns IAM from a central bottleneck into a self-service enabler for the business.

◉ Professional Experience

Senior Engineering Manager, IAM Platforms

HEB Digital • Dallas, TX

2023 – Present

Orchestrating a multi-year enterprise IAM modernization for a 180K+ employee workforce, consolidating 900+ applications onto a unified Okta ecosystem and advancing Zero Trust across workforce, privileged, and non-human identities.

Platform Strategy & Zero Trust

  • Defined and drove the multi-year IAM roadmap; conducted vendor evaluations that shaped the future-state identity architecture.
  • Advanced Zero Trust by securing privileged access and non-human identities (NHI) using Clutch, Teleport, CrowdStrike, Okta Identity Governance, and OPA.
  • Evolved Okta to deliver OAuth-based API protection, hardening modern application architectures.
  • Led PoCs with leading PAM vendors to reduce risk in high-privilege environments; defined the NHI lifecycle roadmap from vendor evaluation through automation.

Migration & Consolidation

  • Directed consolidation of 900+ applications onto Okta as the primary IDP, including migration of 500+ apps from OneLogin and 200+ apps from on-prem ADFS with minimal business disruption.
  • Launched Okta Identity Governance to centralize user lifecycle management, streamline access requests, and automate compliance certification campaigns.
  • Deployed PAM controls to close PCI DSS 4.0 MFA requirements for privileged users.

Security as Code & Self-Service

  • Championed a “Security as Code” culture, standardizing Terraform-led automation for IAM configuration and policy.
  • Delivered self-service application onboarding via Terraform, shifting ownership to application teams and removing the central IAM bottleneck.
  • Built tooling and processes that enabled secure help-desk user verification and streamlined day-2 IAM operations.

Team & Leadership

  • Assembled and scaled a dedicated team of security engineers to rebuild the enterprise IAM platform from the ground up.
  • Established the operating model, hiring bar, and engineering practices that repositioned IAM as an enterprise enabler.

Manager, Software Development

Oracle America • Frisco, TX

2013 – 2023
  • Built and scaled a multi-tenant Identity-as-a-Service platform providing Single Sign-On across Oracle cloud applications, user and role management, OAuth / OpenID / SAML federation, MFA, audit reporting, and analytics.
  • Led federation integrations with customer identity providers including Microsoft Azure, Okta, Exostar, ForgeRock, and Ping Identity.
  • Drove identity infrastructure improvements through automation, compliance tooling, and transparent release reporting.
  • Partnered with peer engineering managers and product owners to prioritize roadmap and streamline multi-team releases.
  • Recruited, retained, and grew a high-trust team of engineers; mentored individuals into technical and people-leadership tracks.

Enterprise Architect

Homeward Residential • Coppell, TX

2011 – 2013
  • Automated onboarding of new loans for servicing, reducing processing time by 40%+.
  • Modernized the investor reporting portal into a single pane for performance tracking and summary reporting, generating over $5MM/yr in manual-labor savings.

Solutions Architect

Keste • Plano, TX

2007 – 2011
  • Designed and delivered a global B2B transaction platform, product-configuration rules engine, and quotes portal for Alcatel-Lucent, driving $10MM+ in revenue over two years.

Earlier Experience

WiQuest Communications • Cognizant Technology Solutions

2004 – 2006

Software Intern at WiQuest Communications (2006), working on Windows WHQL certification for wireless devices; Programmer Analyst at Cognizant Technology Solutions (2004–2005), supporting AMEX card-services operations and SLA compliance.

Core Competencies

Identity & Access

Okta Okta Identity Governance CyberArk / PAM Clutch Teleport CrowdStrike OPA SCIM OAuth 2.0 • OIDC • SAML FIDO2 / WebAuthn Zero Trust CIAM Non-Human Identity (NHI)

Compliance & Risk

PCI DSS 4.0 SOX SOC 2 NIST CSF Audit Automation Access Certification

Cloud & Platform

AWS Kubernetes Docker Kafka Terraform REST APIs SQL / NoSQL Cloud-Native Dev Data & Analytics

Leadership

Multi-Year Roadmap Vendor Evaluation Team Scaling & Coaching Cross-Functional Delivery Executive Communication

Education

Master of Business Administration

The University of Texas at Austin — McCombs School of Business • May 2020

Master of Science, Computer Science

The University of Texas at Dallas • May 2007

Bachelor of Engineering, Information Technology

Osmania University, Hyderabad, India • May 2004

Certifications

  • (ISC)² — Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
  • Amazon Web Services — AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
  • Oracle — Access Management Suite Plus 11g Implementation Specialist
  • DataCamp — Data Scientist with R
  • 10gen — MongoDB for Java Developers
  • Oracle — WebCenter Implementation Specialist
  • UT Dallas — Information Assurance Program Accomplishment

Ready to Secure What Matters?

Open to conversations on IAM strategy, leadership opportunities, or collaboration.

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