CareerDev4AI

Security Engineer

Designs and builds the security controls that protect products and platforms, from threat modelling through to secure implementation and detection.

Security & Compliance Senior level $120,000 - $185,000 / year

What the role involves

  • Threat model new products and features before they ship
  • Embed secure defaults into the frameworks and pipelines engineers already use
  • Lead security reviews of architecture and high-risk changes
  • Turn findings into durable fixes rather than one-off patches
  • Coach engineers on secure design and remediation patterns

Core skills

  • Application Security (level 5/5)
  • Threat Modelling (level 4/5)
  • Secure Code Review (level 4/5)
  • Cryptography Fundamentals (level 3/5)
  • Cloud Security (AWS Security Hub) (level 4/5)
  • Identity & Access Management (IAM) (level 4/5)
  • Incident Response Procedures (level 3/5)

Preferred skills

  • Penetration Testing (Wireshark, Burp Suite)
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
  • Security Frameworks (NIST/ISO)

Tools

Burp SuiteSemgrepGitHub Advanced SecurityAWS IAMVaultSnykPythonLinux

Experience expected

4-7 years in application, cloud or product security engineering

Projects that prove the role

  • Secure design review process that cut critical findings before release
  • Secrets-scanning and signed-build pipeline adopted across all services
  • Threat model turned into a reusable engineering checklist

Evidence to collect

  • A documented threat model for a real system
  • A security control you shipped that removed a whole class of vulnerability
  • Published advisory or internal security guidance you wrote

What the interview covers

  • Running a threat model for a payments flow
  • Explaining a vulnerability class you found and how it was permanently fixed
  • Designing authorisation boundaries for a multi-tenant system
  • Balancing remediation urgency with release pressure

How the role progresses

  • Security Analyst
  • Security Engineer
  • Senior Security Engineer
  • Staff Security Engineer
  • Head of Security

Certifications that carry weight

  • OSCP
  • Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
  • Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)

Related roles

  • cybersecurity-analyst
  • software-engineer
  • cloud-devops-engineer

Turn this into a plan

Inside CareerDev4AI, choosing this role generates a roadmap of the skills, projects and milestones that move you towards it.

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