Ajay Billava

Principal IAM Engineer · PAM Platform Lead · Identity Security Lead

Senior IAM and Platform Security Engineer with 9+ years delivering enterprise-scale access transformations, privileged access management (PAM), and identity governance (IAM) in regulated financial environments — reducing security risk through automation, platform hardening, and policy enforcement.

Dublin, Ireland
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Stamp 4 — No sponsorship required

Core Competencies

IAM & Security

Infrastructure

Automation

Monitoring/SIEM

AI & API Security

Cloud & Compliance

Experience

Aug 2024 – Present

Senior BizOps Engineer · Mastercard

Dublin, Ireland

  • • Managed 1,000+ Work Orders, 360+ Change Requests, and 70 Governance tasks over 12 months, maintaining average resolution of 3–5 days across critical production access workflows.
  • • Engineered PMDB Health Check automation script to surface all platform errors, cutting Change Request (CRQ) resolution time by 70%.
  • • Built SSH key autodetection system for SecureMC onboarding compliance, removing a recurring class of manual remediation tasks.
  • • Architected dual-control PAD platforms for India, South Africa and Nordics — enabling new account onboarding without disrupting existing production infrastructure.
  • • Resolved critical PMDB buffer issue via Broadcom vendor collaboration — earning director-level recognition.
May 2022 – Jul 2024

Senior Security Operations Analyst · Mastercard

Dublin, Ireland

  • • Led CyberArk onboarding and PAM policy enforcement across Linux and AIX/ACX environments as primary operational owner across 3+ engineering teams.
  • • Diagnosed a spike in access-related escalations through 3-month data analysis; designed targeted broadcast communications reducing inbound noise.
  • • Resolved a critical AIX policy propagation failure caused by a corrupt parent policy — devising a subscription-based workaround.
  • • Authored and standardised incident response playbooks adopted org-wide, improving triage consistency and operational efficiency.
Jul 2021 – Apr 2022

Business Analyst — Network Security · Tata Consultancy Services

Letterkenny, Ireland

  • • Delivered CyberArk and vulnerability management implementations in OCI environments.
  • • Designed IAM/PAM integration workflows, aligning with enterprise security architecture and compliance requirements.
  • • Implemented firewall and WAF policies, strengthening network security posture.

Earlier Career

Nov 2020 – Jul 2021

IT Analyst · Dixons Carphone

Dublin, Ireland

  • • Migrated analytics platforms to cloud environments, improving scalability and access governance.
  • • Presenting the proposed solutions to the clients and explaining the industry jargon in a clear, confident, and concise manner.
  • • Developed secure Tableau dashboards, enabling controlled data access and reporting.
  • • Enhanced phishing detection workflows, improving SOC visibility and response times.
Oct 2019 – Oct 2020

Technical Support Engineer · Currys PC World

Dublin, Ireland

  • • Created a separate section for 'Order & Collect' feature during Covid-19, helping save time and ensuring more safety.
  • • Provide remote and on-site support to customers regarding technical difficulties including Active Directory.
  • • Installing operating systems like Windows and Linux on customer systems and validating SWIFT payments.
Jan 2018 – Dec 2018

Senior Test Engineer · Pole To Win International

Bangalore, India

Tester of the Quarter - Quarters 1,2,3,4 – Year 2017

  • • Developed reusable test frameworks, saving ~3 days/month of manual testing effort
  • • Created a test case suite to generalize basic and most false-positive events, saving approximately 3 days a month.
  • • Managed a small part of the team and a major project in an agile environment.
  • • Knowledge Transfer to new team members and preparing Daily/Weekly Status Reports.
  • • Function, compatibility, and compliance testing in all mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, Amazon).
Jan 2016 – Dec 2017

Test Engineer · Pole To Win International

Bangalore, India

  • • Perform Functional, Regression, Smoke, and BVT for every new build.
  • • Reporting Bugs based on their priority and severity of the functionality.
  • • Compatibility testing of the application on different devices.
  • • Interacted with Clients regarding queries related to queries and defects uploaded.
Dec 2014 – Dec 2015

Trainee Test Engineer · Pole To Win International

Bangalore, India

  • • Validating checklist created by team members and forwarding it back to developer.
  • • Prioritize testing tasks based on client deadlines and requirements.
  • • Bug reporting using online management tool such as JIRA.
  • • Maintaining Regression library while conducting Regression testing.

Certifications

View all on LinkedIn

CyberArk Certified Trustee

CyberArkPAM

CyberArk Privileged Access Security

CyberArkPAM

AWS Security Fundamentals

Amazon Web ServicesCloud

Splunk 7.x Fundamentals

SplunkSIEM

Splunk Infrastructure Overview

SplunkSIEM

Splunk User Behaviour Analytics

SplunkSIEM

Learning Security Frameworks

LinkedInSecurity

GDPR Data Protection Officer Skills

University of DerbyCompliance

Fortinet NSE1 & NSE2 Network Security Associate

FortinetSecurity

Best Cybersecurity Practices for Industrial Control Systems

LinkedInSecurity

Ethical Hacking: Evading IDS, Firewalls, and Honeypots

LinkedInSecurity

Network Forensics

LinkedInSecurity

Cybersecurity for IT Professionals

LinkedInSecurity

AI Fluency Framework & Foundations

AnthropicAI

Building with the Claude API

AnthropicAI

Introduction to Model Context Protocol

AnthropicAI

Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics

AnthropicAI

AI Agents for Cybersecurity

NASBA / LinkedInAI

Preparing Your Organization for AI Agents

NASBAAI

Ubuntu Linux Professional Certificate

CanonicalInfrastructure

Docker Foundations Professional Certificate

DockerInfrastructure

Automation Testing in QTP/Selenium

Crystal Acuity Info SystemsTesting

Autopsy Basics and Hands On

Basis TechnologyForensics

ELC Leadership and Management

ELCLeadership

Remote Work Foundations

LinkedInProfessional

Job Skills: Learning the Basics

LinkedInProfessional

Delivering an Authentic Elevator Pitch

LinkedInProfessional

AI Security & Emerging Specialisation

Building applied expertise at the intersection of identity security and AI governance.

AI Security Tooling

Certified in Claude API, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and AI agent frameworks (Anthropic, NASBA, 2026).

AI Governance

Applying EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, and ISO 42001 to identity and access control design — including privileged access to AI models and audit trail requirements.

Home Lab Practice

Containerised services (Docker) with network segmentation, secrets management, and service hardening — applied experimentation in zero-trust adjacent architecture.

Languages

English

Fluent

Hindi

Fluent

Kannada

Native

Tulu

Native

Konkani

Native

Education

Postgraduate Diploma in Cybersecurity

National College of Ireland, Dublin

2019–2020

Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science

Visvesvaraya Technological University, India

2010–2014