Head of Active Directory Services

If you’re looking for a career that will help you stand out, join HSBC, and fulfil your potential - whether you want a career that could take you to the top, or an exciting new direction, we offer opportunities, support and rewards that will take you further.

We’re one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, with a network that covers more than 50 countries and territories. We aim to be where the growth is, enabling businesses to thrive and economies to prosper, and, ultimately, helping people fulfil their hopes and realise their ambitions.

We’re currently seeking an experienced professional to join our team in the role of Head of Active Directory Services.

You’ll be accountable for the operational stability, security posture, and strategic roadmap of our Active Directory environment, ensuring resilient and compliant directory services that underpin enterprise authentication, authorisation, access management, and business continuity. You’ll lead the delivery and continuous improvement of Active Directory services, partner closely with the Identity & Access Management Control Operator and the Authentication & Authorisation Manager to maintain effective access governance and control oversight and provide leadership to a 20+ colleague engineering and operations team. As the senior point of accountability, you’ll also own service health, risk management, and recovery readiness to meet our policy requirements and regulatory expectations.

As an HSBC employee in the UK, you’ll have access to tailored professional development opportunities and a competitive pay and benefits package. This includes private healthcare for all UK-based employees, enhanced maternity and adoption pay and support when you return to work, and a contributory pension scheme with a generous employer contribution.

In this role you’ll:

• Be accountable for enterprise Active Directory service outcomes, including availability, performance, resilience, and recoverability, while owning service measures and targets, operational health reporting, and the delivery of continuous improvement
• Lead major incident and problem management for directory services, ensuring high-quality root cause analysis, effective preventative actions, and a measurable reduction in repeat incidents
• Own the security posture for Active Directory, including privileged access controls, hardening standards, patch compliance, and alignment with our  security policies
• Oversee governance for Active Directory administration and change, ensuring appropriate segregation of duties and effective operational controls
• Define and deliver the Active Directory roadmap aligned with the enterprise identity strategy, covering lifecycle upgrades, migrations, platform optimisation, and technical debt reduction
• Drive the reduction of deprecated and legacy protocols and insecure configurations to strengthen security and modernise the environment, while ensuring recovery readiness through robust backup and restore capability and, regular disaster recovery testing with outcomes reported to the appropriate governance forums
• Lead, develop, and performance-manage the Active Directory engineering and operations team, setting clear priorities and building capability across operations, engineering change, and service improvement
• Engage senior stakeholders across Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Identity and Access Management, and application teams to align priorities and manage dependencies, while clearly communicating technical risks, trade-offs, and investment needs to senior forums to enable timely decisions and accountable delivery

To be successful in this role you should meet the following requirements:

• Extensive experience delivering directory services within a global financial services organisation, with deep knowledge of enterprise Active Directory services and the associated operational processes and controls is mandatory
• Prior leadership experience (direct line and/or matrix) is preferred, with a proven ability to lead and develop teams of 20+ colleagues in a live production service environment is mandatory
• Essential hybrid identity experience, including integration with Microsoft Entra ID
• Deep expertise in Active Directory Domain Services and Group Policy in large-scale enterprise environments, with a strong understanding of authentication and authorisation controls, including Kerberos, New Technology LAN Manager, and privileged access concepts
• Proven experience operating multi-site Active Directory platforms with resilient design patterns and large-scale operational support, alongside demonstrated capability in security hardening, patching, and operational security controls, working knowledge of backup and restore and disaster recovery practices (including recovery testing), and experience reducing reliance on deprecated and legacy protocols to strengthen security
• The Ability to set clear objectives, coach performance, and build technical and operational capability
• Strong stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, including communicating complex technical topics to non-specialist senior audiences
• Experience leading (or being accountable for) a critical production service in a regulated, audit-driven environment

Opening up a world of opportunity.

Being open to different points of view is important for our business and the communities we serve. At HSBC, we’re dedicated to creating diverse and inclusive workplaces - no matter their gender, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or age. We are committed to removing barriers and ensuring careers at HSBC are inclusive and accessible for everyone to be at their best. We take pride in being a Disability Confident Leader and will offer an interview to people with disabilities, long term conditions or neurodivergent candidates who meet the minimum criteria for the role.

If you have a need that requires accommodations or changes during the recruitment process, please get in touch with our Recruitment Helpdesk:

Email: hsbc.recruitment@hsbc.com

Telephone: +44 207 832 8500