Principal Security Engineer

About the role

You will serve as a technical leader reporting to the CISO, defining the security strategy for software development across the organization. This role involves guiding architectural decisions and fostering a security-first culture to protect core products and infrastructure.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Architect and build software solutions to address high-level security risks like technology fragmentation.
• Create a multi-year technical roadmap for software security.
• Develop shared security infrastructure to reduce data sprawl and overpermissioning across business units including Square, Cash App, and TBD.
• Oversee security for critical systems, such as tokenization platforms, to ensure performance and scalability.
• Direct the security strategy for mobile platforms and product ecosystems.
• Implement security reliability engineering practices to boost system resilience.
• Perform threat modeling and security architecture reviews during the development lifecycle.
• Mentor engineers on system design, technical execution, and security best practices.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in production software development and service delivery.
• 5+ years of experience focused on scaling security practices within a modern technology environment.
• Proven technical leadership at a Principal level or equivalent (L8+).
• Mastery of system design and architecture for complex, ambiguous problems.
• Expertise in security vulnerabilities, risk mitigation, and controls in high-volume transaction environments.
• Ability to write production-grade code or scripts for security tooling and automation.
• Strong communication skills to influence executive leadership and engineering teams.

Nice to have

• Experience driving technical initiatives across multiple organizational boundaries.
• Background in fintech, payments, or cryptocurrency and bitcoin.
• Experience building systems that allow security resources to scale sub-linearly with business growth.

Skills & tools

• Software Security Engineering
• Secure SDLC
• Threat Modeling
• System Architecture
• Security Reliability Engineering (SecRelEng)
• Production-level coding/scripting

Practical notes

• Compensation is market-based and determined by skills, experience, and location.
• Candidates may submit up to 9 active applications every 60 days.
• Reapplications for the same role are permitted 90 days after a previous review.
• Automated AI tools may be used during the application evaluation process.
• Benefits include remote work options, medical insurance, flexible time off, and retirement savings.