Tealium · Security
Multifactor Authentication
Shipping a critical enterprise-security capability under startup constraints as both designer and developer.
Enterprise expectations arrived before enterprise infrastructure.
As Tealium won larger customers, security reviews began requiring an additional layer of authentication. The capability had to cover everyday sign-in, first-time setup, account-level enablement, and administrative recovery.
The team was small and the timeline left no room for a broad identity-platform redesign. We had to define the smallest responsible experience that could ship on the existing stack.
Map every decision before polishing any screen.
I worked with frontend and backend engineering to make the underlying state model explicit. The flow covered four connected journeys:
- First-time enrollment and authenticator setup.
- Returning sign-in with clear invalid-code recovery.
- Account-wide enablement and disablement for administrators.
- Token reset when a user lost access to their authenticator.
We narrowed device support to the path we could implement and test responsibly, then reused established UI patterns so the capability felt native to the product.
A complete security workflow delivered by a four-person team.
The release gave Tealium the user and administrative experiences needed to support multifactor authentication across its early enterprise customer base.
The work reinforced a pattern I still use: under tight constraints, model the system first so every screen solves the right state transition.