Senior Security Architect

Title: Senior Security Architect Location: Houston, Texas Type: Direct Hire Salary: $150,000 - $160,000 Summary The Senior Security Architect will design enterprise security patterns, policies, and standards. This role bridges the gap between high-level regulatory requirements and technical implementation, ensuring that security is “baked-in” to the enterprise architecture lifecycle. This position will serve as the final security reviewer before approval, participating in governance boards and partnering with Legal and Compliance to translate complex regulatory landscapes into implementable technical guardrails. The ideal candidate is a principles-driven architect who leverages deep experience and is able to use AI-driven research to solve complex problems across diverse domains—from cloud-native environments to legacy on-prem systems. Duties Define cloud-native security patterns for ingress/egress, WAF, and API management. Architect service-to-service authentication and workload identity standards. Partner with Senior DevOps to ensure production security compliance and automated guardrails. Design security controls for the end-to-end data lifecycle (Bronze, Silver, Gold layers). Establish standards for data classification, RBAC/ABAC, and encryption-at-rest/in-transit. Ensure data lineage and auditability meet enterprise compliance and legal requirements. Set the policies and practices for Entra ID (Identity), Conditional Access, and PIM. Architect information protection (DLP, sensitivity labels) and collaboration security. Define the “enforcement hand” for M365 posture to be executed by the CEA. Architect security baselines for legacy Windows/Linux environments that cannot move to the cloud. Define segmentation and compensating controls to mitigate risk in non-modernized stacks. Requirements 6+ years of combined experience in Security Engineering and Security Architecture. Strong mastery of security architectural principles (e.g., Zero-Trust, Defense-in-Depth, Least Privilege) rather than just tool-specific knowledge. Demonstrated ability to use AI-driven research and foundational experience to quickly master and secure specialized components (e.g., EventHub/Kafka, AKS, Fabric) without needing prior deep certifications in those specific tools. Ability to defend architectural decisions to the CEA and translate technical risks into “business-speak” for Legal and Compliance partners. Relevant security architecture certifications (e.g., CISSP-ISSAP, CCSP, or equivalent experience-based validation). Work closely with Legal Counsel and the Compliance Officer to interpret regulatory matters and translate them into technical security standards. Act as the primary security reviewer for project solution architectures, ensuring alignment with enterprise patterns before final sign-off. Own the 3-year strategic plan to fully implement Zero-Trust principles across all four enterprise domains. Serve as a key member of Architecture Review Boards (ARB) and other governance bodies. Ensure all architectural patterns produce the necessary telemetry and audit trails required for regulatory evidence and incident response. #J-18808-Ljbffr