Security Architect - Payments
- Salary
- $160K–$190K
- Hiring from
- United States
- Work type
- Hybrid
- Posted
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Position Overview
SteerBridge is seeking an experienced Security Architect to lead security architecture for a mission-critical payments platform that supports commercial and federal customers in AWS GovCloud. This role defines the security design, standards, and roadmap across cloud and hybrid infrastructure, applications, data, identity, and external integrations, translating mission needs, federal cybersecurity frameworks, and applicable commercial security requirements into secure, compliant, and scalable architectures.
The architect partners with cloud and solutions architects, DevSecOps engineers, application developers, the security operations team, compliance stakeholders, and program leadership. The architect establishes security requirements and design patterns, reviews implementation evidence, and guides remediation; engineering teams implement and operate the controls, while security operations monitors the environment and leads incident response.
This is a technical leadership role with hands-on design validation. The ideal candidate leads threat modeling and architecture reviews, produces clear security diagrams and architecture decision records, evaluates implementation tradeoffs, and validates critical controls through prototypes and technical reviews. They communicate residual risk and recommendations to the stakeholders authorized to make risk acceptance decisions.
This is a hybrid position based in Vienna, VA.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and maintain the target security architecture and roadmap for a multi-account AWS GovCloud environment, including trust boundaries, data flows, shared services, hybrid connections, and external integrations, and advise program leadership on security, mission, cost, and delivery tradeoffs.
- Lead threat modeling and security design reviews for new capabilities and material changes, prioritizing risks and defining mitigation and validation requirements.
- Define secure cloud and hybrid baselines and reference architectures for hardening, identity federation, least-privilege access, network segmentation, zero-trust access, encryption, and key and secrets management.
- Design protection for sensitive data throughout its lifecycle, including API access, storage, retention, backup, recovery, and auditability, in accordance with organizational security and privacy policies.
- Review Terraform and Terragrunt designs, cloud configurations, and GitLab CI/CD workflows, set software supply chain requirements for dependencies, containers, artifact integrity, and SBOMs, and mentor engineering teams on secure delivery.
- Define logging, retention, and detection coverage requirements with security operations, review Microsoft Sentinel and AWS logging designs, and support audits, penetration testing, and incident response planning.
- Conduct risk assessments, gap analyses, and vulnerability assessments, prioritize findings by mission impact, validate remediation with engineering teams, and escalate exceptions and residual risk to designated authorities.
- Develop, maintain, and own SSPs and ATO packages, including boundary diagrams, control narratives, assessment evidence, and POA&Ms, applying NIST SP 800-53 and RMF through assessment, continuous monitoring, and reauthorization.
- Eligibility Requirements: U.S. citizenship is required for this position under applicable federal contract requirements. Candidates must also be able to obtain and maintain the security clearance required for the role.
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, or Software Engineering.
- 8+ years of experience in cybersecurity, cloud security, or security engineering, including 3+ years designing security architectures for complex cloud or enterprise systems, with expertise in multi-account AWS security (identity and access management, network segmentation, encryption and key management, and centralized logging).
- Expertise with federal security requirements (FISMA, FedRAMP, NIST SP 800-53, and RMF), including creating and maintaining SSPs and ATO packages, and with commercial requirements such as GLBA, CCPA, FinCEN reporting, PCI-DSS, GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO, with the ability to translate requirements into architecture and control evidence.
- 10+ years of cybersecurity experience in federal or large enterprise environments, including leadership of security architecture, threat modeling, and authorization activities in AWS GovCloud, VA programs, or other regulated federal cloud environments.
- Master’s degree or PhD in a related field, and/or certifications such as CISSP, ISSAP, CCSP, CISM, CAP, CASP, GSLC, AWS Certified Security – Specialty, or AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional.
- Experience with AWS Organizations, service control policies, landing zones, container security (ECS, Fargate, or Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD supply chain security.
- Experience designing Microsoft Sentinel integrations, centralized security telemetry, and zero-trust access using Zscaler ZPA/ZIA, Palo Alto VM-Series, or comparable technologies.
- Experience conducting vendor and third-party security due diligence, including reviewing SOC reports and CUECs, interpreting contractual security flow-down requirements, and translating vendor assurance into ATO control inheritance and risk documentation.
