Principal IT Security Architect

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
 

Grade: Technical 411

Pay Range: $157,000.00 - $243,400.00

Job Description

Job Summary

The Principal IT Security Architect is a position of technical expertise, influence, and leadership in the security technology realm. The Principal Security Architect is highly passionate and is a deeply technical Security

Expert to help the University and its employees develop sound security practices. WGU Principal Security Architects will deliver security solutions, risk and control guidance, lead proof-of-concept projects, and conduct workshops. Experience determining, verifying and documenting security flaws in accordance with industry best practice.

Job Duties

• Cultivates secure coding standards based on industry-accepted frameworks.
• Works with developers as part of the Software Development Life Cycle.
• Identifies, exploits, and remediates common security vulnerabilities using tools.
• Functions as a lead security architect with penetration testing, incident handling/digital forensics, continuous monitoring, intrusion detection/prevention, auditing, risk analysis, compliance, security awareness, data security, threat hunting, vendor risk analysis, and identity and access efforts.
• Identifies, exploits, and remediates common application vulnerabilities using tools and code review.
• Prioritizes and tracks assigned security issues.
• Enforces secure development standards and requirements.
• Drives successful outcomes in a complex environment using a deep understanding of enterprise risk management methods & techniques and knowledge of compliance & security standards across the enterprise IT landscape.
• Hardens networks, containers, VMs, and other cloud infrastructure to reduce risk of cloud security misconfigurations.
• Writes and implements policy-as-code to automate compliance and security configuration management enforcement.
• Leads in the development of Security Content and Use Case Development. Alerting aligning to the MITRE ATT&CK Framework.
• Participates in tactical projects as they arise to clarify and respond to identified security risks across different technical domains.
• Assists in the development of cloud security policies and procedures.
• Builds and maintains relationships across the University to promote cloud security initiatives.
• Researches and deconstructs cyber-attacks into sequenced Indicators of Compromise (IOC) detectable through network device logs. Creates abstract rules to detect network intrusions based on IOCs. Conducts open-ended analysis of large data sets to find network activity baselines and abnormalities.
• Designs and implements SOAR functions to automate compliance enforcement, security configuration management, and malicious activity remediation.
• Identifies gaps in the University’s security model and suggests solutions, including tools and processes.
• Engages with security architects to capture design requirements for cloud architectures and implementation strategies.
• Creates new processes and identifies new threats and mitigation strategies.
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.

KSAs

• Knowledge of security industry standards and best practices. Proven experience interpreting and implementing those standards in a corporate environment.
• High integrity and confidentiality when working with sensitive data.
• Ability to operate information