Thomas Zarnhofer

Thomas Zarnhofer is the Identity & Access Management (IAM) Strategy and Architecture Lead at SPAR ICS, the IT division of the SPAR Austria Group.

SPAR operates across Austria and five additional European countries in food retail and shopping centers, generating over €10 billion in annual revenue and employing around 91,000 people as beginning of 2026. Including external workforce, SPAR manages more than 100,000 digital identities and several million customer identities.

With over 20 years of experience in infrastructure, middleware, and security, Thomas has led interdisciplinary teams and delivered large-scale security and IT infrastructure solutions in complex enterprise environments.

He has been a key driver of SPAR’s IAM journey from its early stages, shaping a holistic, enterprise-wide IAM strategy. Today, he is responsible for defining and executing the next generation of IAM at SPAR: driving the strategic IAM program, advancing modernization efforts, and establishing a future-ready identity architecture aligned with business growth and evolving threat landscapes.

His work focuses on building an identity-centric Zero Trust architecture and transforming IAM into a strategic enabler for secure digitalization, seamless user experiences, and scalable access governance across the organization.

Outside of work, Thomas enjoys traveling to explore new cultures and cities, as well as hiking in the mountains around his home city of Salzburg.