Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them.

Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

Opportunity

Welcome to the blue team! As a Security Architect, you will drive both business and security innovation and play a key role in the evolution of Empower’s security architecture and functions.

The Work

You will work as part of a security architecture team to provide guidance for the enterprise technology environment, with the goal of maturing the company’s security posture. You will help develop and standardize the security architecture, perform security assessments, and review system designs for security considerations. You will be a security advocate and will advise key stakeholders and service owners on risk management and how to effectively balance security and business requirements.

The ideal candidate must possess extensive experience architecting secure computer systems, analyzing requested applications and vendors, demonstrating excellent communication skills and have a passion for emerging technology, such as Generative AI. This Security Architect is responsible for providing thought leadership and security related subject matter expertise around a wide range of technologies and business initiatives. This will involve defining standards & guardrails, crafting secure design patterns, performing security assessments of vendor/opensource technologies using a risk-based, threat-modeling approach.

The Security Architect will have the following responsibilities:

• Partner with Enterprise Architecture and technology teams to create secure designs that meet security requirements and enable business objectives
• Participate in emerging technology proof-of-concepts or pilot projects while retaining an eye on meeting security obligations and good practice
• Develop relationships, repeatable processes, and resources to usher security champions
• Perform threat-modeling as required to substantiate the recommendations & designs
• Participate in the development and maintenance of security policy, standards & reference materials
• Review and contribute to infrastructure-as-code representations of architecture designs or changes

Candidate

You are passionate, curious, and self-driven. You have a passion for trying new things, working with emerging technologies, and aren't afraid to fail fast-forward. You enjoy understanding and solving complex problems with incomplete information. You may not know everything, but you have a solid foundation and can untangle, self-learn, and identify creative ways to solve problems. Likewise, you should be extremely comfortable architecting secure cloud-based systems, and you should be able to convey security threats, business implications & architectural requirements to multiple audiences.

Skills and Experience Baseline

• Ability to collaborate & communicate effectively with technical & non-technical teams
• Extensive experience designing & building secure cloud-native solutions, especially in Amazon Web Services (AWS) & Microsoft Azure
• Ability to partner with multiple stakeholders to derive accurate threat models for new/existing systems and reduce information security risk on systems
• Demonstrable experience and passion for emerging technologies
• Knowledge of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) principles & experience reviewing infrastructure configurations/changes in this format (e.g., CloudFormation, Terraform, etc.)
• Strong technical foundations in modern application/microservice architectures & related technologies (e.g., Containers, Kubernetes, Service Mesh, RESTful/gRPC APIs, etc.)
• Understanding of CI/CD & Secure Development processes & tools (e.g., Jenkins, Git, etc.)
• Strong foundation in cybersecurity landscape, especially in identity & access management, network access control, and secure configuration management

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or related field; or equivalent experience.

Additional Skills & Qualifications You May have

• Familiarity with AWS Well-Architected Framework or Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework
• Familiarity with scrum project management tools (e.g., Jira)
• Professional certifications such as: AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Cloud Practitioner, Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP), Certified Secure Software Engineer, SANS/GIAC Certificates, or Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Experience working in Financial Services or FinTech space

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity.  All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.