Principal Platform Security Engineer

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze®, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Early Warning follows a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Job Description

Overall Purpose

The Principal Platform Security Engineer is a hands-on enterprise technical leader responsible for defining the long-term technical vision, secure target states, architecture patterns, technical standards, and control strategy for platform security across products, platforms, and shared services. This role leads principal-level engineering efforts that bridge product, infrastructure, and security, ensuring that secure engineering is embedded throughout the software and infrastructure lifecycle. The role establishes scalable security capabilities, influences enterprise technical direction, and drives adoption of secure-by-default patterns across multiple systems and pillars.

Essential Functions

• Owns the enterprise technical vision for platform security engineering across shared services, internal platforms, and engineering workflows.

• Defines and drives secure target states, enterprise-scale design patterns, engineering standards, and control strategies spanning multiple products, platforms, and technology pillars.

• Shapes long-range technical direction for secure-by-default platform capabilities, balancing risk reduction, scalability, resilience, and developer experience.

• Leads the most complex security engineering decisions involving platform security, shared services, lifecycle controls, and systemic risk reduction.

• Partners with senior engineering, infrastructure, product, and security leaders to align long-term roadmaps, investment priorities, and enterprise design direction.

• Establishes reusable frameworks, reference implementations, technical guardrails, and scalable automation that are adopted broadly across the organization.

• Evaluates emerging technologies, engineering options, and operating models to guide enterprise security engineering strategy.

• Resolves highly ambiguous, cross-domain technical challenges and provides clear recommendations on risk, tradeoffs, sequencing, and implementation approach.

• Influences enterprise technical standards, major engineering decisions, and control adoption models across multiple teams and domains.

• Leads technical response strategy for significant platform security issues with a focus on durable correction and systemic improvement.

• Mentors senior engineers and serves as a recognized technical authority across the organization.

• Supports the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data.

Minimum Qualifications

• Typically has 15 or more years of experience or demonstrated portfolio consistent with experience required of the role.

• Expert-level experience across platform, infrastructure, software, and security engineering, including architectural and implementation leadership.

• Significant experience owning technical direction for broad engineering domains, enterprise initiatives, or highly complex cross-functional programs.

• Significant experience defining target states, standards, design patterns, reference architectures, or control strategies adopted at scale.

• Demonstrated ability to influence senior technical and business stakeholders and align multiple organizations around a common technical direction.

• Strong experience solving complex, ambiguous, systemic engineering problems with durable and scalable solutions.

• Demonstrated technical leadership without requiring formal people management authority.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical risk, tradeoffs, and strategic recommendations.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience serving as a principal engineer, architect, or equivalent enterprise technical leader.

• Experience shaping enterprise platform strategy, cloud strategy, or secure engineering transformation efforts.

• Experience with large-scale platform modernization, shared services strategy, or internal developer platform evolution.

• Experience representing technical strategy, engineering risk, and target-state recommendations to senior leadership.

• Additional related education and/or experience.
• In depth knowledge with public cloud service architectures such as AWS, Azure, and GCP
• Security experience with highly regulated institutions
• Experience with Threat Modeling or Architectural Risk Analysis

Physical Requirements

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.

Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers.

The above job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow instructions and perform other related duties as assigned by their supervisor.

The base pay scale for this position in:
Phoenix, AZ/ Chicago, IL in USD per year is: $184,000 - $253,000.
San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $221,000 - $304,000.
Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.

This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.

• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.

• Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.

• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave

• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.