Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for User Account Analyst
💰 $60,000 - $95,000
🎯 Role Definition
The User Account Analyst is responsible for managing, auditing, and optimizing user account lifecycle processes across enterprise systems. This role plays a critical part in identity and access management (IAM), ensuring secure, compliant, and efficient access to applications, data, and infrastructure. User Account Analysts act as a bridge between IT security, HR, compliance, and business units, safeguarding organizational assets while enabling productivity.
📈 Career Progression
Typical Career Path
Entry Point From:
- IT Support Specialist
- Service Desk Analyst
- Junior Systems Administrator
Advancement To:
- Identity & Access Management (IAM) Analyst
- Security Operations Analyst
- IAM Engineer or Architect
Lateral Moves:
- Compliance Analyst
- IT Risk or Governance Analyst
Core Responsibilities
Primary Functions
- Manage the full user account lifecycle including provisioning, modification, suspension, and deactivation across enterprise systems.
- Administer user access in Active Directory, Azure AD, LDAP, and other directory services.
- Ensure role-based access control (RBAC) and least-privilege principles are consistently enforced.
- Process access requests and approvals in accordance with internal policies and regulatory requirements.
- Conduct regular access reviews and user entitlement certifications.
- Investigate and remediate access violations, orphaned accounts, and segregation-of-duties (SoD) conflicts.
- Collaborate with HR to align user access with employee onboarding, offboarding, and role changes.
- Maintain accurate documentation of account management procedures and access control standards.
- Support internal and external audits by providing evidence of access controls and compliance activities.
- Monitor privileged access and coordinate with security teams on high-risk accounts.
- Utilize IAM tools to automate provisioning workflows and reduce manual effort.
- Respond to access-related incidents and support security investigations.
- Ensure compliance with standards such as SOX, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2.
- Analyze access patterns and recommend improvements to identity governance processes.
- Manage service accounts and non-human identities according to security best practices.
- Coordinate with application owners to define and maintain access roles.
- Review and validate access for contractors, vendors, and third-party users.
- Enforce password policies, MFA requirements, and authentication controls.
- Track and report on access metrics, KPIs, and audit findings.
- Stay current on IAM trends, security threats, and regulatory changes impacting user access.
Secondary Functions
- Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
- Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
- Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
- Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Required Skills & Competencies
Hard Skills (Technical)
- User account administration in Active Directory and Azure AD
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) platforms (e.g., SailPoint, Okta, Saviynt)
- Access governance and user entitlement reviews
- Role-based access control (RBAC) design and enforcement
- Audit support and compliance reporting
- Privileged access management (PAM) concepts
- Ticketing systems such as ServiceNow or Jira
- Basic scripting (PowerShell, Python) for automation
- Understanding of authentication methods, MFA, and SSO
- Familiarity with security frameworks and compliance standards
Soft Skills
- Strong attention to detail and accuracy
- Clear written and verbal communication
- Ability to handle sensitive and confidential information
- Analytical and problem-solving mindset
- Time management and prioritization in high-volume environments
- Collaboration with cross-functional teams
- Process-oriented and documentation-focused approach
Education & Experience
Educational Background
Minimum Education:
- Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
Preferred Education:
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Cybersecurity, or Computer Science
Relevant Fields of Study:
- Information Technology
- Cybersecurity
- Computer Science
Experience Requirements
Typical Experience Range:
2–5 years in IT operations, IAM, or security-related roles
Preferred:
Experience supporting enterprise IAM programs in regulated or large-scale environments