About Ali Barzin
IAM Architect · QE Leadership · AI/ML-Powered Assurance
I'm an IAM architect and quality engineering leader with 9+ years of experience building production identity and security software — SDKs, mobile apps, IdPs, APIs, and multi-tenant platforms.
My career is rooted in enterprise identity at SecureAuth and Acceptto: OAuth2/OIDC/SAML, SSO, MFA, device trust, directory integration (Active Directory, Azure AD, LDAP), session and token lifecycle, and risk-adaptive access. As a quality engineering leader, I built the automation-first standards, CI/CD quality gates, and severity-weighted defect metrics that validated ML-driven risk engines in production adaptive authentication — cutting release defect density up to 85%. Today I architect an integrated identity platform with agentic AI assurance — fail-closed step-up MFA, tenant isolation, and eval-gated releases — as sole quality owner across 2,500+ automated tests, building toward a Quality Engineering Center of Excellence as the platform scales.
AI/ML is a genuine passion alongside this work — I build production-ready AI systems — LLMs, RAG, tool-calling agents, and classical ML — with the same bar as everything else I ship: reliable, testable, and deployable, not notebook demos. I completed Interview Kickstart's AI/ML Software Engineering Program (2025–2026), with perfect scores on ML and system design case studies.
I'm open to remote roles where identity architecture, quality engineering, and AI/ML come together — IAM architect, quality engineering leadership, and AI/ML-for-identity opportunities in regulated industries.
Education & Training
AI/ML Software Engineering Program
Interview Kickstart (2025–2026) — Perfect scores on ML and system design case studies. Supervised/unsupervised learning, deep learning (PyTorch/TensorFlow), LLM applications, agentic AI, and end-to-end ML pipeline design.
Executive MBA
Industrial Management Institute — Strategic management and business leadership
BSc in Economics
Allameh Tabataba'i University — Econometrics, statistical modeling, and quantitative analysis
BSc in Civil Engineering
Azad University — Systems thinking and analytical problem-solving
Certificate in Web Development & Design
Portland Community College — GPA: 3.9. Final Project: Android App (Awarded A+ for originality and execution)
Identity, Quality Engineering & AI/ML Experience
Nine years of hands-on work in enterprise identity, security, and authentication — leading quality engineering practices from mobile SDKs and behavioral identity to multi-tenant SaaS IAM validation and full-stack platform architecture:
Current — IAM Architect · Quality Engineering Leadership (2025–Present)
Lead IAM architect and sole quality owner on a confidential, pre-launch identity platform — IdP protocols, directory sync, MFA, device trust, mobile authenticator, and agentic AI with fail-closed assurance. 2,500+ automated tests, OpenAPI contracts, and the early foundations of a Quality Engineering Center of Excellence.
SecureAuth — Senior Software QA Engineer · Enterprise IAM & ML Risk Engines (2022–2025)
Owned automation-first quality practices and CI regression for a multi-product IAM suite (IdP, Connect, workforce/CIAM), using severity-weighted defect density to cut release defect rates up to 70%. Validated ML-driven risk engines (location, browser, time-anomaly) in adaptive authentication through E2E and API automation.
Acceptto — Software Engineer · Identity, Security & ML Validation (2016–2022)
Introduced severity-weighted defect density (85% reduction) while building Java Android SDK, backend services, and end-to-end identity architecture for cognitive authentication — encryption, session lifecycle, MFA flows, and automated validation of ML-integrated behavioral risk pipelines.
IAM Protocols & Platforms
OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, SCIM/LDAP, WebAuthn/passkeys, RBAC, conditional access, and audit logging. Working familiarity with Azure AD/Entra ID and Okta federation and integration patterns.
AI / ML Engineering
Production AI and machine learning — integrated with identity where it matters, and as standalone systems across my portfolio:
ML in Authentication
Adaptive risk engines, anomaly scoring, model validation through CI release gates, and fail-closed enforcement in security-critical auth paths.
LLMs & RAG
LangChain, FAISS, embeddings, semantic search, multi-phase LLM pipelines, and grounded retrieval for production applications.
Agentic AI
Tool-calling agents, RBAC-scoped tools, step-up authentication, citation enforcement, versioned prompts, and CI-gated eval harnesses.
Classical & Deep ML
Scikit-learn, PyTorch, XGBoost, feature engineering, SHAP interpretability, Optuna tuning, and end-to-end deployment patterns.
Technical Expertise
Identity & Security
IAM architecture, OAuth2/OIDC/SAML, MFA, directory sync, device trust, risk-adaptive auth, session lifecycle
Quality Engineering
Automation-first testing, CI/CD quality gates, severity-weighted defect density, shift-left quality strategy, QE Center of Excellence build-out
GenAI & LLMs
LLM applications, RAG, prompt engineering, agentic AI, tool-calling workflows
Machine Learning
Supervised/unsupervised learning, deep learning (CNNs, RNNs, Transformers), model evaluation in CI
Software Engineering
Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, Android SDK, FastAPI, Flask, REST/OpenAPI, microservices
Validation & MLOps
Test automation, eval harnesses, CI/CD (GitHub Actions, Jenkins), Docker, Kubernetes
Infrastructure
AWS, system design, observability, release reliability, and production hardening
Career Focus
I build production identity platforms with quality engineering as the backbone — IAM architecture, automation-first QE, and modern assurance layers (agentic AI, risk engines, eval harnesses) in regulated, enterprise environments. I'm especially interested in roles that combine quality engineering leadership, worker and client identity, adaptive authentication, and secure platform delivery at scale.