Sitesh Choudhary

Principal IAM Engineer with 15+ years of enterprise identity experience, including 8 years at Wells Fargo leading Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) architecture, platform strategy, and governance design for a global financial institution. Deep hands-on expertise in Oracle Identity Manager (OIM); led the RFP evaluation for next-generation IGA platform selection across SailPoint IdentityIQ, Saviynt, and Oracle IDM, including hands-on proof-of-concept implementations for SailPoint IdentityIQ and Saviynt.

How I approach IGA

• Stabilize before modernizing. Governance improvements built on an unreliable platform don't hold up — provisioning failures undermine trust in the certification data itself.
• Coarse roles, governed exceptions. A role for every access pattern in the data is unmaintainable. A modest set of birthright roles plus a governed exception path stays legible as the organization changes.
• Certifications need context, not entitlement lists. A reviewer with no basis for a decision approves everything. Role-based summaries, usage data, and risk tiering are what make a review a real control.
• Data quality precedes governance value. Certifications and SoD analysis are only as trustworthy as the identity and entitlement data underneath them.

Core expertise

Experience

1. Mar 2018 — Present

   Principal Engineer – IGA Platform Architecture

   Wells Fargo International Solutions

   • Served as end-to-end technical owner for enterprise IGA transformation — spanning platform strategy, architecture design, integration engineering, and governance model definition across a global financial institution.
   • Authored the enterprise Request for Bid (RFB) defining technical and functional requirements, evaluation criteria, and success metrics for next-generation IGA platform selection — covering SailPoint IdentityIQ, Saviynt, and Oracle IDM — directly influencing vendor selection outcomes.
   • Led hands-on proof-of-concept implementations for SailPoint IdentityIQ and Saviynt as part of the platform evaluation, validating vendor claims against real integration and governance requirements rather than relying on demos alone.
   • Designed enterprise IAM use cases including Joiner–Mover–Leaver (JML) lifecycle workflows, periodic access certification frameworks, SoD governance controls, and automated provisioning pipelines integrated with HR systems and directories.
   • Developed a phased IGA migration roadmap for onboarding enterprise applications to the target platform, classifying applications by integration complexity, business criticality, and risk posture to sequence migrations without operational disruption.
   • Architected and validated integrations between IGA platforms and enterprise systems — Active Directory, JDBC, Web Services, and disconnected applications — ensuring governance coverage across the application portfolio.
   • Defined RBAC and policy-based access models, aligning entitlement structures with business roles, access request workflows, and approval hierarchies to enforce least privilege at scale.
   • Implemented IAM observability frameworks — real-time monitoring, audit logging, and health dashboards — tracking migration progress, provisioning failures, and policy violations across identity platforms.
   • Aligned IGA processes with SOX, GDPR, and internal audit requirements; defined security and compliance controls and supported regulatory reviews.
   • Collaborated with security architects, cloud teams, and vendors to align IGA architecture with Zero Trust principles and enterprise security strategy.
   • Led knowledge transition and operational readiness across teams — producing runbooks, stakeholder training, and support model documentation to eliminate single-person dependencies.

2. Mar 2016 — Mar 2018

   Technology Lead – IAM Engineering

   Wells Fargo International Solutions

   • Led end-to-end project lifecycle across requirements, design, build, testing, and production deployment for OIM platform enhancements and upgrades.
   • Managed OIM platform stability — including stack bundle patching, version upgrades, sandbox environment management, and lower environment change coordination.
   • Served as primary liaison with application and business owners for access governance change and enhancement requests.
   • Designed and deployed custom OIM UI components; automated operational tasks through reusable SQL scripts and scheduled jobs, reducing manual intervention.
   • Managed incident response and created custom access certification and compliance reports for audit readiness.

3. Dec 2013 — Mar 2016

   IAM Developer & L3 Support

   Cognizant Technology Solutions

   • Led Go-Live planning, hyper-care support, and performance tuning for enterprise OIM deployments.
   • Designed custom workflows, connectors (File, DBUM), event handlers, and BI Publisher reports for access governance automation.
   • Wrote SQL scripts for data cleanup, reconciliation, and deployment automation — reducing recurring manual effort significantly.
   • Supported SOX audits with access certification reports, compliance reporting, and control evidence packages.
   • Mentored junior team members and handled L2/L3 production issues, maintaining SLA adherence.

4. Sep 2010 — Nov 2013

   IAM Developer

   Infosys Technologies Limited

   • Developed workflows, connectors, schedulers, and adapters on OIM 10g for enterprise provisioning automation.
   • Customized the UI layer using Struts 2.0 and enabled email notification and provisioning automation.
   • Integrated legacy financial applications and delivered manual and automated provisioning solutions.
   • Contributed to code reviews, testing, client engagement, and production issue resolution.

Certifications

Education

My production experience is Oracle Identity Manager, RBAC, JML, and governance operating models. Beyond that, here's what I'm actively studying right now — not production experience, just in progress.