Application Security architect (threat modeling)

Application Security architect (threat modeling)

Location: Open to Charlotte, Irving, Raleigh, Columbus – Hybrid 

Interview: Virtual

  Role Summary

The Senior Threat Modeler is responsible for performing deep, architecture informed threat modeling for enterprise applications, services, and platforms. This role emphasizes system decomposition, architectural reasoning, and adversarial analysis, supported by standardized threat modeling tooling and methodologies.

This position is designed for practitioners who have built and operated enterprise systems and who can reason about how complex systems behave, fail, and are misused at scale. Threat enumeration and mitigation libraries are supported by tooling; judgment, prioritization, and architectural insight remain human responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities

A successful candidate will:

• Engage directly with application, service, and platform teams to derive a deep, accurate understanding of real-world system architectures, including implicit dependencies, trust boundaries, and operational behaviors.
• Decompose complex enterprise systems into components, data flows, and trust boundaries suitable for formal threat modeling.
• Model application and platform architectures using the enterprise-standard threat modeling tool (ThreatModeler), ensuring completeness, accuracy, and reuse of patterns where applicable.
• Apply the enterprise threat modeling methodology to identify, assess, and prioritize threats, using tooling-generated threat libraries in combination with human risk judgment.
• Evaluate the plausibility and impact of threats, distinguishing theoretical exposure from realistic attack paths.
• Review architectural designs, configurations, and source code evidence to validate claimed mitigations and control implementations.
• Recommend pragmatic, risk informed mitigations, favoring architectural and design-level controls where possible.
• Document, publish, and present threat modeling results in a clear, defensible manner suitable for engineering, leadership, and audit stakeholders.
• Collaborate with Cybersecurity Architecture and platform teams to define or evolve mitigating control patterns when existing controls are insufficient or unavailable.
• Manage multiple threat models concurrently, maintaining throughput and quality while working within defined delivery timelines.

Required Qualifications

• Core Architecture & Engineering Background (Primary)
• 6+ years of experience building, designing, or operating enterprise systems, including application development, platform engineering, or systems architecture.
• Demonstrated experience decomposing complex systems (e.g., distributed services, data platforms, cloud-native architectures) and reasoning about their behavior under normal and failure conditions.
• Experience working directly with engineering teams on system design and delivery, with accountability for outcomes
• Security & Threat Modeling Foundations (Supporting)
• 2+ years of experience applying security principles to system design, risk analysis, or application security, or equivalent experience demonstrated through work history.
• Practical understanding of common application security failure modes (e.g., authorization flaws, trust boundary violations, unsafe data handling).
• Familiarity with at least one structured threat modeling methodology (e.g., STRIDE, PASTA, or VAST), with the ability to apply it pragmatically rather than mechanically.
• Experience using threat modeling tools (e.g., ThreatModeler, Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool, OWASP Threat Dragon) to develop and maintain threat models.
• Cloud & Technical Literacy
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform), including core primitives such as identity, networking, and managed services.
• Ability to read and reason about source code, infrastructure-as-code, or configuration artifacts (deep coding expertise not required).
• Scripting or automation experience (e.g., Python) sufficient to support analysis, validation, or tooling integration.
• Collaboration & Delivery
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to lead architecture and threat modeling discussions with senior engineers and architects.
• Ability to exercise judgment, push back constructively, and make defensible risk decisions.

Desired Qualifications

• Prior experience building or leading architecture risk reviews or threat modeling efforts across multiple applications or platforms.
• Experience threat modeling cloud-native, distributed, or event-driven architectures.
• Experience threat modeling emerging technologies (e.g., GenAI-enabled systems).
• Familiarity with Threat Modeling as Code (TaaC) or automation-assisted modeling approaches.
• Security or cloud certifications (e.g., CISSP, CCSP, Azure/AWS/Google Cloud Platform), understood as complementary rather than primary qualifications.