Principal Security Engineer - Application Identity

UBank; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working model

Career development

Collaborative culture

Job summary

UBank seeks a Principal Security Engineer to lead application identity security across customer-facing products. You will define patterns, drive secure defaults, and partner within product tribes to harden authentication and service-to-service authorisation.

Bring 10+ years in security engineering, architect identity solutions, and guide cross-functional squads toward zero-trust, mTLS, and resilient security design in a regulated financial context.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on security engineering experience in complex distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and govern security architecture for application identity and authentication across cloud-native platforms.

Skills

Security engineering

Application security

Identity architecture

Authentication platforms

Threat modelling

Zero-trust

OAuth federation

mTLS

Tools

OIDC

SAML

FIDO2

Job description

Principal Security Engineer - Application Identity

About Us:

At Ubank, we empower the digital generation to achieve financial success. Think of us as your daily money companion, offering a unified view of your finances with smart features and real-time insights. Save more, track spending, and achieve home ownership faster with Ubank.

The Why:

The Principal Security Engineer (Application & Identity) is the senior technical authority for application security and identity architecture across a modern digital bank's customer-facing products. This role designs and builds reusable security patterns, reference implementations, and middleware that make the secure path the easy path for every product squad – spanning customer authentication, service-to-service authorisation, payment-rail integrations, and vendor federation.

Working as an embedded engineering partner within product tribes, this role holds binding decision authority on security architecture for new integrations and auth flows, and is accountable for continuously hardening the identity landscape within a regulated, cloud-native environment.

Key Responsibilities:

Security Architecture & Engineering

• Design and build production security patterns, middleware, and reference implementations that make secure defaults the path of least resistance for product squads
• Define binding security architecture decisions for authentication flows, service authorization, and third-party integrations – with clear escalation paths where trade-offs exist
• Build and maintain reusable threat models, security building blocks, and integration patterns that reduce time-to-production for new features and partnerships

Identity & Authentication

• Lead the technical strategy for customer authentication and credential lifecycle – evolving toward phishing-resistant, modern identity standards
• Design service-to-service authorisation architecture ensuring least-privilege, auditability, and resilience across the microservices landscape
• Establish certificate management, mTLS, and API security patterns for external partner and payment-rail integrations

Embedded Partnership & Influence

• Partner directly with product tribes during design and delivery – providing security architecture guidance as an embedded engineering collaborator, not an external gate
• Coach and enable squads to conduct threat modelling and apply security patterns independently, scaling security decision-making beyond the security team

Pattern Library & Secure Defaults

• Build and curate a living security pattern library covering identity, integration, and data protection – ensuring patterns stay current as the threat landscape evolves
• Define quality gates for security patterns, measuring adoption, effectiveness, and coverage across the engineering organisation

Continuous Hardening & Risk Reduction

• Ensure the identity architecture is continuously hardened through automated validation, least-privilege reviews, and proactive elimination of privilege escalation paths
• Lead security incident response for application and identity domains – conducting root cause analysis and translating findings into preventive engineering controls

Governance & Regulatory Alignment

• Ensure application security and identity controls satisfy APRA CPS 234 obligations through engineering implementation rather than compliance documentation alone
• Provide technical evidence and architectural artefacts that demonstrate control effectiveness to internal and external audit functions

Your Experience:

• 10+ years of hands-on security engineering experience, with at least 4 years focused on application security, identity architecture, or authentication platforms in complex distributed systems.
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing production identity systems – customer-facing authentication, service mesh authorisation, certificate lifecycle management, or API security at scale.
• Proven track record of creating reusable security patterns, libraries, or frameworks that engineering teams adopted to eliminate recurring vulnerability classes without requiring ongoing consultation.
• At least 3 years operating in environments with significant third-party integration complexity – payment processors, data providers, or financial services partners requiring mTLS, OAuth federation, or certificate-based trust.
• Experience in a regulated financial services, fintech, or payments environment (APRA, PRA, FCA, OCC, or equivalent) is highly desirable.

Candidates would able to bring in:

• Production identity platform engineering (OIDC, SAML, FIDO2, passkeys)
• Threat modelling and secure design embedded in delivery squads
• Security pattern libraries adopted org-wide
• mTLS, certificate lifecycle, and API gateway security
• Payment-rail and third-party integration security architecture
• Zero-trust and least-privilege architecture in containerised environments

Why Ubank?

• Innovation with impact:From meaningful work to amazing benefits, we equip you with the tools and support to drive real change - so your ideasdon’tjust stay ideas, they become impact.
• Collaborative,supportive& fun:We believe innovation is a team sport. It comes from a special kind of culturethat’shighly collaborative and gives people the support they need to thrive.
• Build something great:Ubank is where ambition meets opportunity. Wedon’tjust talk about change - we give you the tools, trust, and support to make it happen.
• Freedom to be yourself:We celebrate individuality and give you the flexibility to work in ways that suit your style. Our hybrid working model lets you balance connection and autonomy.
• Accelerate your Career:With clear paths for career development, your potentialwon’tjust berecognised,it’llbe accelerated.

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of our local area.

This Sydney-based permanent role requires Australian or New Zealand citizenship or permanent residency.

We welcome applicantsofall backgrounds, and our Talent team is excited toconnect withyou.