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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Digital Security Architect

💰 $120,000 - $220,000

Information SecuritySecurity ArchitectureCloud SecurityCybersecurity

🎯 Role Definition

The Digital Security Architect is a senior technical leader responsible for designing, implementing, and governing scalable, business-aligned security architectures across on‑premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. This role defines security roadmaps and standards, performs architecture reviews and threat modeling, selects and validates security technologies, and partners with engineering, product, and risk teams to ensure secure design and secure-by-default deployments. A strong candidate combines deep technical expertise (cloud security, IAM, encryption, network segmentation, DevSecOps) with the ability to translate risk into prioritized architectural controls and measurable security outcomes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Security Engineer / Principal Security Engineer
  • Cloud Architect / Cloud Security Engineer
  • Application Security Engineer / DevSecOps Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Director / Head of Security Architecture
  • Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
  • VP of Cloud & Security Engineering

Lateral Moves:

  • Security Consulting Principal / Advisory Architect
  • Cloud Security Architect
  • Risk & Compliance Manager / GRC Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design and document end-to-end enterprise security architectures that align with business strategy and compliance requirements, including logical and physical diagrams, security control mappings, and implementation roadmaps.
  • Develop and maintain a multi-year security architecture roadmap that prioritizes risk-reducing initiatives, cloud migrations, zero trust adoption, and secure-by-design practices across platforms and product lines.
  • Lead threat modeling, attack surface analysis, and architectural risk assessments for new products, major changes, and cloud-native initiatives; translate findings into prioritized mitigation plans and architecture changes.
  • Define and enforce architecture standards, security patterns, and reference implementations for cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP), hybrid, and on-prem environments to ensure consistency, scalability, and compliance.
  • Architect identity and access management (IAM) solutions including SSO, SAML/OIDC, OAuth 2.0, MFA, and privileged access management (PAM); design role and attribute-based access control models and provisioning workflows.
  • Design secure network segmentation, micro-segmentation, and zero trust architectures at the enterprise and cloud workload level; integrate with SDN, SASE, and next-gen firewall technologies.
  • Specify and evaluate cryptographic controls, encryption-at-rest and in-transit strategies, key management and PKI architectures; own key lifecycle and HSM/service integrations (e.g., AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, HashiCorp Vault).
  • Define cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud workload protection (CWPP), container and Kubernetes security patterns, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) guardrails to prevent drift and enforce secure deployments.
  • Lead selection, proof-of-concept (POC), procurement, and architectural integration of security platforms (SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, CASB, WAF, API security, DLP) and align vendor solutions with the target architecture.
  • Integrate security into CI/CD pipelines by defining DevSecOps standards, automated security testing (SAST/DAST/SCA), IaC scanning, and security gating to shift security left across the development lifecycle.
  • Establish logging, monitoring, and detection architecture patterns that feed SIEM and threat detection platforms, define event taxonomy, and support incident response and threat hunting activities.
  • Perform security architecture reviews and code/design walkthroughs for major initiatives, provide prescriptive remediation guidance, and track closure of high-risk architecture findings.
  • Collaborate with incident response and engineering teams to harden systems post-incident, implement compensating controls, and incorporate lessons learned into architecture updates.
  • Define data protection architecture: classification, tokenization, data loss prevention (DLP), data encryption schemes, and data access patterns to minimize exposure and meet privacy requirements (GDPR, CCPA).
  • Develop secure integration patterns for SaaS applications, APIs, and third-party vendors including federation, API gateways, mutual TLS, and secure data exchange protocols.
  • Drive the adoption of Zero Trust principles by defining trust zones, authentication flows, continuous authorization, device posture checks, and identity-centric security controls.
  • Author and maintain enterprise security architecture artifacts, patterns, blueprints, standards, and runbooks to accelerate secure product delivery and enable consistent implementation across teams.
  • Conduct architecture-level compliance assessments and map security controls to frameworks and regulations (NIST CSF, ISO 27001, SOC2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA) in collaboration with GRC teams.
  • Provide senior-level technical leadership and mentorship to security engineers, architects, and solution teams to elevate secure architecture capabilities across the organization.
  • Collaborate with procurement, legal, and vendor management to conduct third-party risk assessments and ensure vendor architectures meet security and regulatory requirements.
  • Measure and report on architecture program KPIs such as time-to-remediation for architecture findings, coverage of secure controls, cloud risk posture, and reduction of critical vulnerabilities over time.
  • Drive automation of policy enforcement, remediation workflows, and architecture validation using orchestration and infrastructure-as-code to reduce manual risk and enable scale.
  • Represent security architecture on product and platform committees, participate in sprint planning and architectural governance boards, and sign off on high-risk technical changes.
  • Evaluate emerging technologies (SSE, confidential computing, secure enclaves, homomorphic encryption) and provide recommendations and POC sponsorship for strategic adoption.

Secondary Functions

  • Support incident post-mortems and architectural remediation planning following security incidents; ensure architectural lessons are integrated into roadmaps.
  • Own and deliver security architecture inputs for RFP responses, vendor evaluations, and procurement processes.
  • Develop and deliver security architecture training, pattern libraries, and brown-bag sessions to engineers and product teams to increase secure design adoption.
  • Participate in security tabletop exercises and business continuity planning to validate architecture resilience and recovery objectives.
  • Contribute to capacity planning for security controls and ensure architecture supports operational scalability and performance SLAs.
  • Assist in maintaining up-to-date architecture documentation, runbooks, and playbooks for on-call and operations teams.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Enterprise security architecture design: ability to create logical and physical security designs, security control mappings, and architecture roadmaps.
  • Cloud security architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP): strong experience with cloud-native controls, IAM, VPC/VNet design, container/Kubernetes security, and cloud migration patterns.
  • Identity & Access Management (IAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM): SSO, OIDC/OAuth2, SAML, RBAC/ABAC design, Okta, Azure AD, CyberArk, or equivalent.
  • Zero Trust architecture and network segmentation: designing micro-segmentation, SASE, ZTNA, and least-privilege network models.
  • DevSecOps and secure CI/CD integration: experience with IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation), automated SAST/DAST/SCA, pipeline policy enforcement, and security automation.
  • Threat modeling and risk assessment: STRIDE, PASTA, or similar methodologies and the ability to convert threats into mitigations and architecture changes.
  • Security tooling and platforms: SIEM/SOAR (Splunk, Elastic, Azure Sentinel), EDR/XDR (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne), CASB, WAF, API security platforms.
  • Cryptography and key management: PKI design, HSM integration, symmetric/asymmetric encryption patterns, TLS/TCP hardening.
  • Compliance and frameworks: practical knowledge of NIST CSF, ISO 27001, SOC2, PCI-DSS, GDPR and mapping controls to architectures.
  • API and application security architecture: secure API gateways, mutual TLS, OAuth scopes, input validation, and secure session management.
  • Container and orchestration security: Kubernetes security best practices, Pod security, runtime protection and image scanning.
  • Network security and segmentation: firewalls, NGFW, IPS/IDS, VPN, SDN and overlay/underlay network security considerations.
  • Vulnerability management and secure configuration: integrating scanner outputs into architectural mitigations and patch planning.
  • Automation & scripting: familiarity with Python, Bash, or similar for automation of security checks and orchestration.
  • Architecture documentation & modeling: experience with C4 models, UML, architecture decision records (ADRs), and diagramming tools.

Soft Skills

  • Strategic thinking with the ability to translate business goals into prioritized security architecture initiatives.
  • Excellent stakeholder management: communicate complex technical concepts to executives, product owners, and engineering teams.
  • Leadership and mentorship: lead cross-functional teams, influence without authority, and mentor junior architects and engineers.
  • Strong written and verbal communication for architecture documentation, policy writing, and board-level reporting.
  • Problem-solving and analytical mindset: diagnose systemic security issues and propose pragmatic solutions under constraints.
  • Project and time management: manage multiple architecture projects, proofs-of-concept, and delivery timelines concurrently.
  • Collaboration and facilitation skills: run architecture review boards, workshops, and design sessions with product and engineering teams.
  • Continuous learning orientation: stay current on threat landscape, security frameworks, and emerging security technologies.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent technical discipline.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, or Business Administration with a cybersecurity concentration.
  • Professional certifications (CISSP, CISM, CCSP, TOGAF, AWS/Azure/GCP Security Specialty) considered a strong plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science / Computer Engineering
  • Cybersecurity / Information Security
  • Information Systems / Network Engineering
  • Software Engineering / Cloud Computing

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 7–12+ years of progressive security experience with at least 3–5 years in architecture or senior security engineering roles.

Preferred:

  • Proven track record designing security architectures for large-scale cloud and hybrid environments.
  • Demonstrated experience executing security architecture programs, driving cross-functional adoption, and delivering measurable risk reduction.
  • Experience working in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, retail, government) and mapping architectures to compliance requirements.
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