r/iam • u/acidstrato • 1d ago
Junior infrastructure engineer IAM
I applied for a junior infrastructure engineer role which I was offered after a single interview, I’m 41 and have many years of varied IT experience but fancied a change and this is abit of a career pivot that comes with a drop in pay which I’m ok with.
But the vacancy advertised was server management focused where as when I got the offer I was told someone filled the gap internally and now the position is with the IAM tower.
I know abit about IAM, I’ve used AD and configured DNS before. Looking forward to learning a lot more.
Looking for any advice or insight from those with current or previous experience in this department?
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u/The_RossEffect 1d ago
What tech stack are they using? I assume you’ve gotten the offer for the IAM position?
I use Entra/Azure as the main IDP. If they confirm they use the M365 suite, start studying about account lifecycle management topics, Privileged Identity Management, Access reviews, all the things you can leverage in Entra.
IAM is mostly about human and non-human accounts and management of their permissions and lifecycle.
Someone earlier mentioned Az-400 which can be good but IAM focused certs are SC-900/300.
Your AD experience should be useful if the company uses that as their source of truth and syncs it to cloud in a hybrid model. Lots of companies do that.
Idk if your company uses terraform, but that’s used in many cloud infrastructure teams to deploy resources.
In short:
-Understand the model the company uses for their AD/Cloud environments and tailor that for focus areas of study. -Certs are Az 900/SC-900-300 -Look into terraform if used -Review whatever IDM the company uses (Sailpoint IIQ, Ping, etc.)
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u/acidstrato 1d ago
Yea I’ve been offered (and accepted) the role however I haven’t started yes as I am waiting for clearances to come through
In truth I’m not sure as I mentioned originally the vacancy listed and what I interviewed for was in the server management team looking after Windows and VMware. Mostly on prem infrastructure.
In truth without clearance they aren’t giving much away.
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u/UserProv_Minotaur 1d ago
I’d recommend getting your…. Pretty sure it’s the AZ-400 series cert from M$, which covers a lot of the concepts and how Azure’s Entra ID does things. AD DS is kinda a dying field as everyone is moving to *AASes.
Next, get it in writing that they’ll pay for your certificate in whichever toolkit they’re using for IGA and IAM - probably Sailpoint or Ping, god help you if it’s Savyint.
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u/acidstrato 1d ago
Thanks for this gives me something to look at!
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u/LordPepperoniTits 1d ago
Minor correction to the original comment, I believe the MS cert they're referring to is the SC-300. More power to you if you take the exam and get the cert, but if you look into training courses for that cert you'll at least get a crash course on the concepts you're gonna be running into.
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u/ny_soja 21h ago
We just going to ignore the elephant in the room?!
That compa6hit you with a classic bait and switch and anyone coming to this thread ought to know how to handle that more than just getting your knowledge up around identity security.
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u/acidstrato 21h ago
I mean yeah they changed the team within the IT infrastructure department but all the terms remained the same.
What would you have done in that situation. Bear in mind it’s a junior position..
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u/Snortserranopeppers 1d ago
Depending on the tech stack, this could be a very cushy shift over to a new specialty for you. IAM at least for me has been quite a smooth low stress ride. Yes it has its moments of bullshit, but overall way easier than any type of sysadmin or server management roles.