Senior Privileged Access Specialist

About Us

We are a construction-centric organization dedicated to successfully delivering complex projects through effective contract management, commercial expertise, risk mitigation, and collaborative team efforts. Our diverse teams span Project Management, Construction, Engineering, Procurement, Commercial, Legal, Finance, HR, Design, Quality, HSE, Consultants, Contractors, Suppliers, Logistics, Administration, IT, and Executive Leadership. Together, we focus on maintaining secure technology infrastructures, safeguarding sensitive data, enhancing access control measures, and ensuring smooth business and project operations.

Role Overview

The Senior Privileged Access Specialist will play a critical role in managing privileged access, identity security, access governance, account administration, and security monitoring. You will oversee compliance aspects and risk mitigation by providing advanced technical and operational support throughout the lifecycle of privileged access — from account onboarding and provisioning to monitoring, certification, incident response, auditing, and continuous process improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer enterprise-wide privileged access management procedures across IT environments.
• Handle privileged accounts including administrative, service, emergency, and other high-access credentials.
• Implement access controls aligned with company security policies and standards.
• Assess and approve privileged access requests based on operational needs and authorizations.
• Provision, update, suspend, or revoke privileged access following set protocols.
• Apply least-privilege access principles and enforce segregation of duties for critical systems.
• Support initiatives related to role-based access control and privileged access governance.
• Manage credentials through designated privileged access management platforms.
• Configure and maintain password vaulting, credential rotation, session monitoring, and privileged account controls.
• Oversee monitoring of privileged sessions, admin activities, authentications, and unusual access patterns.
• Analyze access logs to detect suspicious or unauthorized activity, escalating as needed.
• Assist incident responses involving compromised credentials, unauthorized access, and policy breaches.
• Coordinate with various IT teams (Network, Infrastructure, Cloud, Application, Database, Systems) for privileged access needs.
• Support privileged access management across servers, databases, network gear, cloud services, applications, endpoints, and other vital IT assets.
• Maintain detailed inventories of privileged accounts, ownership, and associated systems.
• Identify and remediate unmanaged, orphaned, dormant, shared, or excessive privileged accounts.
• Facilitate onboarding of new systems/applications into privileged access platforms.
• Integrate privileged accounts and systems into centralized access and security frameworks.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive procedures for privileged account lifecycle management.
• Document privileged access architecture, processes, configurations, controls, and operations thoroughly.
• Conduct periodic access reviews and certifications with stakeholders.
• Collaborate with HR and management to promptly adjust privileged access during employee transitions.
• Support processing joiners, movers, and leavers with respect to elevated privileges.
• Review service accounts and machine identities to ensure proper ownership, authentication, permissions, and lifecycle management.
• Assist in deploying multi-factor and strong authentication controls for privileged accounts.
• Enforce password complexity, credential rotation, session timeouts, and access controls.
• Monitor compliance of privileged account activities with organizational policies and security requirements.
• Produce regular reporting on privileged accounts, access requests, reviews, exceptions, incidents, and control efficacy.
• Provide management with detailed risk and remediation analyses related to privileged access.
• Support internal and external cybersecurity audits involving identity and access controls.
• Prepare audit evidence, configuration documentation, records, approvals, and certifications.
• Ensure adherence to UAE cybersecurity regulations, privacy laws, contractual obligations, and organizational standards.
• Stay updated on relevant cybersecurity frameworks, regulatory requirements, industry norms, and emerging best practices in identity security.
• Coordinate cross-functionally with Legal, Compliance, Risk, Internal Audit, and Security teams on privileged access governance.
• Identify weaknesses in access control, excessive permissions, policy exceptions, and related risks; recommend corrective actions.
• Support remediation of vulnerabilities linked to privileged credentials and admin access.
• Assist privileged account security management during infrastructure migrations, cloud adoption, upgrades, and projects.
• Participate in incident response activities involving privileged credentials.
• Support forensic investigations by providing authorized access records and relevant logs.
• Liaise with external vendors and security providers on privileged access matters.
• Evaluate and recommend improvements for privileged access tools and technologies.
• Assist system upgrades, configuration changes, testing, and implementation of privileged access solutions.
• Maintain change management documentation for privileged access configurations and controls.
• Ensure access changes are properly authorized, tested, documented, and successfully deployed.
• Support automation of workflows including approvals, account discovery, rotation, and access reviews.
• Identify and address recurring operational issues to optimize privileged access processes and tools.
• Maintain confidentiality for credentials, security logs, personnel data, system settings, and sensitive information.
• Provide mentorship and guidance to junior identity and access management staff.
• Engage in cross-functional security meetings to offer privileged access expertise for technology and business initiatives.
• Keep professional knowledge current on identity security, cybersecurity frameworks, cloud security, authentication, and governance best practices.
• Support Executive Leadership with risk assessments, security reporting, control enhancements, and strategic planning related to privileged access.
• Perform other relevant privileged access management and cybersecurity duties as needed by the organization.