Lead Security Engineer, Digital Asset Custody

Aquent; Southlake (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Subsidized health insurance

Paid sick leave

Retirement plans with a match

Job summary

Aquent is seeking a Lead Engineer in Digital Asset Custody, based in Texas. This role focuses on custody security architecture and demands extensive software engineering experience, particularly in security-sensitive environments.

Key responsibilities include managing custody key architectures, driving policy engine governance, and leading incident response strategies. The right candidate will have over 10 years of experience and comprehensive knowledge of cryptographic systems.

Aquent offers excellent benefits, including health, vision, and retirement plans.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, especially in security-sensitive systems.
• Strong hands-on experience with Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) and Multi-Party Computation (MPC).
• Proven ability to design systems with significant risk implications.

Responsibilities

• Lead custody architectures and risk management for digital assets.
• Develop disaster recovery strategies and incident response plans.
• Design policy engines governing custody operations.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Security-sensitive systems knowledge

Experience with Hardware Security Modules (HSMs)

Knowledge of Multi-Party Computation (MPC)

Familiarity with Web3 Security tooling

Experience with cryptography languages (C, C++, Rust, Go)

Ability to design risk-sensitive systems

Strong grounding in distributed systems

Technical authority experience

Job description

The Opportunity

As a Lead Engineer in Digital Asset Custody, you will serve as the ultimate technical authority, taking deep ownership of key management, custody security architecture, and risk posture across the firm’s digital asset platforms. This high‑impact individual contributor role demands strong engineering judgment in high‑risk, high‑trust environments, operating with autonomy while influencing engineering teams, architects, security, and leadership. Your work will directly ensure incidents are handled with clarity, speed, and technical confidence, and that the custody architecture scales across assets, chains, and future tokenized products without erosion of risk posture.

You will:

• Lead Custody Key Management & Cryptographic Architecture: Design, implement, and evolve institutional‑grade key management architectures, encompassing Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), Multi‑Party Computation (MPC), and secure key generation, storage, rotation, signing, and recovery. You will define clear trade‑offs and architectural patterns across hot, warm, and cold storage models, ensuring cryptographic designs align with regulatory, security, and audit expectations. Partner closely with cybersecurity and risk teams to embed defense‑in‑depth and zero‑trust principles into custody design.
• Drive Custody Policy Engine & Governance: Lead the design of the Custody Policy Engine, governing authorization, approvals, limits, segregation of duties, transaction controls, and exception handling. You will ensure policies are code‑driven, deterministic, observable, and testable, translating business, legal, and risk requirements into clear, enforceable technical controls, and serving as a trusted technical advisor on custody governance.
• Own Disaster Recovery, Resilience & Incident Response: Develop and maintain custody‑specific disaster recovery strategies, including key recovery, quorum loss scenarios, and chain events. You will author and maintain incident response and recovery runbooks for custody‑related failures or security events, partnering with operations, security, and site reliability engineering to ensure practicable, tested recovery procedures. Lead post‑incident technical analysis, root‑cause reviews, and long‑term remediation strategies.
• Shape Overall Custody Architecture & Risk Posture: Act as the custody architecture authority, ensuring consistency across wallets, blockchains, environments, and platforms. Identify architectural and operational risks early, proposing mitigation strategies with clear trade‑offs. Ensure custody designs scale across assets, chains, and future tokenized products, influencing enterprise standards by raising the bar on security, resilience, and technical rigor.
• Champion AI‑Augmented Engineering Excellence: Leverage generative AI and agentic AI tools to accelerate architecture design, threat modeling, documentation, testing, and reviews. Set expectations for AI‑assisted engineering rigor—prioritizing speed with correctness, not shortcuts—and partner with engineering teams to raise architecture, code, and documentation quality across custody components.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with deep specialization in security‑sensitive or cryptographic systems.
• Strong hands‑on experience with Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), Multi‑Party Computation (MPC) frameworks, and secure key management systems.
• Experience with Web3 Security tooling such as Slither, Mythril, Foundry Fuzzing.
• Experience with common cryptography implementation languages such as C, C++, Rust, Go.
• Experience collaborating with leading security auditors.
• Proven ability to design systems where failure has material risk implications.
• Strong grounding in distributed systems, secure architectures, and fault‑tolerant design.
• Track record of acting as a technical authority without formal people management responsibilities.

What Sets You Apart

• Experience with digital asset custody, digital asset platforms, or blockchain infrastructure.
• Prior ownership of incident response, disaster recovery design, or security runbooks.
• Ability to articulate risk‑based trade‑offs clearly to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• A systems thinker who connects technology, security, policy, and operations.
• Comfortable challenging assumptions and raising concerns early in high‑stakes environments.
• Experience applying AI tools to complex engineering workflows.

Aquent Talent connects the best talent in marketing, creative, and design with the world’s biggest brands. Our eligible talent get access to amazing benefits like subsidized health, vision, and dental plans, paid sick leave, and retirement plans with a match.

Aquent is an equal‑opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics. We’re about creating an inclusive environment—one where different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are valued, and everyone can contribute, grow their careers, and thrive.