IAM service account token expiry causing API failures in ERP user provisioning workflow

Cloud Platforms Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
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1

Our ERP system provisions new users by making batch API calls to various GCP services (Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Pub/Sub) using a service account. The batch job runs nightly and processes 200-500 new user accounts. Recently, we’ve seen intermittent failures where API calls fail with authentication errors halfway through the batch.

We’re using service account JSON key authentication. The token appears to expire during long-running batch operations, causing subsequent API calls to fail with 401 Unauthorized errors. This creates incomplete user provisioning and delays employee onboarding by 24+ hours until the next batch run.


Error: Request had invalid authentication
HTTP 401: Invalid authentication credentials
Occurs after ~45-60 minutes into batch job

The IAM token lifetime seems shorter than our batch processing time. How should we handle API authentication for reliable batch operation execution?

2

Service account access tokens have a default lifetime of 1 hour. If your batch job runs longer than that, you need to refresh the token. Are you using a client library or making raw REST API calls? The official Google Cloud client libraries handle token refresh automatically.

3

Paula, we’re using a mix - Python client libraries for some services and direct REST calls for others. The failures happen with the REST API calls. We’re loading the service account key once at job start and reusing the same token. Should we be regenerating tokens periodically?

4

Another option is to use short-lived tokens with Workload Identity Federation if you’re running on GCP infrastructure. This eliminates the need to manage service account keys entirely and tokens are automatically refreshed by the infrastructure.