Cybersecurity Principal Engineer - HYBRID ROLE

Job Description

Company Overview

Vertex Pharmaceuticals is a global biotechnology company that invests in scientific innovation to create transformative medicines for people with serious diseases. We are committed to improving the lives of patients through bold science, advanced technology, and a collaborative, mission-driven culture. At Vertex, employees are empowered to solve complex challenges in an environment that values innovation, integrity, and excellence.

Position Summary

The Principal Cybersecurity Engineer, Core Security Infrastructure is a technical leader responsible for shaping and advancing Vertex’s core security capabilities across network, cloud, application, AI, SaaS, and hybrid environments.

This role serves as a deeply technical engineering leader focused on the design, implementation, hardening, and continuous improvement of foundational security platforms and controls that protect the enterprise while enabling innovation, scalability, resilience, and compliance. The successful candidate will bring strong hands-on expertise, architectural depth, and the ability to lead complex security engineering initiatives across a modern enterprise environment.

The Principal Cybersecurity Engineer will partner closely with cybersecurity, infrastructure, cloud, application, and enterprise technology teams to strengthen security architecture, improve platform effectiveness, enhance automation, and support secure modernization efforts. This role is ideal for a highly experienced engineer who can influence strategy through technical excellence, drive implementation of modern security capabilities, and serve as a trusted expert across core security domains.

Work Model: On-site or Hybrid (Remote work is NOT an option)

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, engineering, implementation, and optimization of enterprise core security platforms across network, cloud, application, AI, SaaS, and hybrid environments.
• Serve as a senior technical expert for foundational security controls, ensuring scalability, resilience, operational effectiveness, and alignment with enterprise security strategy.
• Engineer and enhance Zero Trust capabilities through identity-based access, segmentation, secure access controls, and continuous verification models.
• Design, implement, and support enterprise security infrastructure technologies, including firewalls, intrusion prevention, network access control, web application firewall capabilities, and policy enforcement platforms.
• Drive secure-by-design and secure-by-default principles across infrastructure, application, cloud, SaaS, and AI technology environments.
• Develop and maintain security standards, engineering patterns, reference architectures, guardrails, and technical implementation guidance.
• Improve enterprise visibility through security monitoring, telemetry, governance, and policy enforcement across infrastructure and platform layers.
• Design and implement security controls and validation approaches for AI and generative AI technologies in partnership with architecture and governance stakeholders.
• Lead complex technical initiatives to modernize and automate security platforms, improve operational consistency, and reduce manual effort.
• Partner with cross-functional technology teams to embed security into platform design, engineering workflows, and operational processes.
• Evaluate current security capabilities and recommend technical improvements to reduce risk, improve resilience, and strengthen enterprise defenses.
• Provide technical leadership during platform assessments, architecture reviews, risk remediation, and major engineering decisions.
• Support vendor evaluations, technology selections, and implementation activities related to strategic security platform investments.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to a culture of technical excellence, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Security, Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of experience in cybersecurity, security engineering, infrastructure security, or related technical roles.
• Demonstrated success designing, implementing, and operating enterprise-scale security architecture, engineering, infrastructure, or platform security capabilities.
• Deep techni