Application Security, Specialist

Vanguard Group; Dallas (TX); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Vanguard is seeking an experienced Application Security Lead to own and evolve security capabilities across multiple systems and product families. You will act as a technical authority, guiding secure architecture decisions and aligning with enterprise security standards.

Responsibilities include leading threat modeling, complex security assessments, and risk-based remediation across product teams, while mentoring peers and driving secure development practices. Hybrid work is supported.

Qualifications

• Minimum of five years related work experience.
• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience.
• Graduate degree preferred.

Responsibilities

• Owns the design, implementation, and ongoing evolution of application and product security capabilities across multiple systems, applications, or product families throughout the product lifecycle.
• Serves as a technical authority for application security, influencing secure architecture and design decisions and ensuring alignment with enterprise security standards and industry best practices.
• Leads complex application security assessments, including threat modeling and advanced code reviews, and drives risk-based remediation strategies across product teams.
• Evaluates and prioritizes application security risks across supported products, providing expert guidance on remediation approaches and security trade-offs.
• Leads the integration of new security features, patches, and platform-level enhancements into existing products, ensuring security solutions scale effectively and are consistently applied.
• Provides sustained technical leadership and mentorship to application security and engineering peers, sharing expertise, reviewing work products, and elevating secure development practices.
• Partners with product, engineering, and security stakeholders to continuously improve product security posture, identify emerging threats, and recommend enhancements to security tools, processes, and capabilities.
• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

Skills

Application security

Threat modeling

Code reviews

Security architecture

Mentorship

Education

Undergraduate degree or equivalent

Graduate degree preferred

Job description

Core Responsibilities

• 1. Owns the design, implementation, and ongoing evolution of application and product security capabilities across multiple systems, applications, or product families throughout the product lifecycle.
• 2. Serves as a technical authority for application security, influencing secure architecture and design decisions and ensuring alignment with enterprise security standards and industry best practices.
• 3. Leads complex application security assessments, including threat modeling and advanced code reviews, and drives risk-based remediation strategies across product teams.
• 4. Evaluates and prioritizes application security risks across supported products, providing expert guidance on remediation approaches and security trade-offs.
• 5. Leads the integration of new security features, patches, and platform-level enhancements into existing products, ensuring security solutions scale effectively and are consistently applied.
• 6. Provides sustained technical leadership and mentorship to application security and engineering peers, sharing expertise, reviewing work products, and elevating secure development practices.
• 7. Partners with product, engineering, and security stakeholders to continuously improve product security posture, identify emerging threats, and recommend enhancements to security tools, processes, and capabilities.
• 8. Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Minimum of five years related work experience.
• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience.
• Graduate degree preferred.

Additional Job Description

• Integrate security capabilities across enterprise AI gateways such as Kong or LiteLLM, APIs, and Vanguard-developed AI applications, including prompt and response inspection, PII/secrets detection, access controls, and security logging.
• Partner with Vanguard AI, cloud, application development, cybersecurity, and architecture teams to embed secure-by-design controls throughout the AI lifecycle and protect client, crew, and regulated financial data.
• Engineer and deploy AI guardrails and gateway security controls to detect and prevent prompt injection, sensitive financial or client data exposure, insecure model responses, malicious AI activity, and excessive agent access.
• Design, build, and implement AI runtime security controls to protect Vanguard's Generative AI applications, LLMs, copilots, RAG solutions, and agentic AI systems.
• Enforce inference hooks via Zscaler or Alice inline with AI gateways such as Kong, LiteLLM or similar gateway technologies.

Special Factors Sponsorship

• Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.

About Vanguard

At Vanguard, we don't just have a mission—we're on a mission. To work for the long-term financial wellbeing of our clients. To lead through product and services that transform our clients' lives. To learn and develop our skills as individuals and as a team. From Malvern to Melbourne, our mission drives us forward and inspires us to be our best.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.

About Us

Vanguard, one of the world's largest investment management companies, serves individual investors, institutions, employer-sponsored retirement plans, and financial professionals. We have a diverse and talented crew with a culture that promotes teamwork, along with an unwavering focus on serving our clients' best interests.