Director: Technology - Web Application Firewall (WAF)

FINRA; Rockville (MD); Hybrid; USD 154,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

FINRA in Rockville, MD seeks a Director to lead strategy, engineering, and operations of enterprise WAF, PKI, and cloud security. You will oversee multiple teams and manage budgets, aligning with FINRA’s goals while adopting AI-enabled security capabilities.

Strong leadership and experience in security, software development, and governance are required to coordinate with partners and deliver scalable technology at FINRA's standards.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related discipline; Master’s degree and Financial Services industry experience preferred.
• Minimum of 5 years of technical project, program and/or practice area oversight.
• Experience influencing decisions and building consensus across internal and external partners.

Responsibilities

• Own the strategy, architecture, and day-to-day operations of the enterprise WAF program, including rule tuning, policy management, false-positive reduction, DDoS/bot mitigation, and protection of internet-facing and internal applications.
• Direct the PKI practice, including certificate authority operations, certificate lifecycle management and automation, key management, HSM administration, TLS/mTLS standards, and code-signing services.
• Evaluate and adopt evolving AI capabilities to improve engineering productivity, threat detection, and operational efficiency, while managing security, privacy, and governance risks.
• Coordinate with internal and external partners to deliver methods, procedures, practices, documents and results to increase reliability and usability of technology while optimizing costs and ROI.
• Lead organization’s financial and budget activities to fund operations, maximize investments, and increase efficiency for a program or practice area.
• Provide leadership in technology best practices, including application security, cryptography, secure software engineering, cloud security, and responsible AI adoption.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related discipline

Master’s degree and Financial Services industry experience preferred

Job description

Job Profile Summary: The Director is generally autonomous in their oversight and active management for a Technology program and/or practice area and most often reports directly to a Senior Director or Vice President. This role leads the strategy, engineering, and operations of enterprise Web Application Firewall (WAF) protection, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Certificate lifecycle management, secure software development, and public cloud platform, ensuring applications and APIs are protected across on-premises and cloud environments while adopting emerging and evolving AI capabilities.

Essential Job Functions:

• Process and Operations
• Directly manage and/or influence separate teams focused on delivering high quality results within one or more major technology disciplines: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and compliance.
• Own the strategy, architecture, and day-to-day operations of the enterprise Web Application Firewall (WAF) program, including rule tuning, policy management, false-positive reduction, DDoS/bot mitigation, and protection of internet-facing and internal applications.
• Direct the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) practice, including certificate authority (CA) operations, certificate lifecycle management and automation, key management, HSM administration, TLS/mTLS standards, and code-signing services.
• Evaluate and responsibly adopt evolving AI capabilities (e.g., generative AI, AI-assisted development, and AI-driven security tooling) to improve engineering productivity, threat detection, and operational efficiency, while managing associated security, privacy, and governance risks.
• Focus on coordination with internal and external partners to deliver methods, procedures, practices, documents and results to increase reliability and usability of technology while optimizing costs and return on investment.
• Deliver results based upon FINRA annual goals, department goals and management requests.
• Direct and coordinate organization’s financial and budget activities to fund operations, maximize investments, and increase efficiency for a program, project and/or practice area.
• Provides leadership in technology best practices, including application security, cryptography, secure software engineering, cloud security, and responsible AI adoption best practices.
• Analyze information and evaluate results to choose the best solutions and solve problems.
• Support the evaluation of new technologies, techniques, and tools across WAF, PKI/cryptography, and associated AI.
• Report status and issues to senior Technology management team.
• Work directly with outside vendors to negotiate services and product agreements, including WAF, certificate authority, security, and AI security tooling providers.
• Serve as backup to more senior level management as needed.
• Develop constructive and cooperative working relationships with peers both within and outside of Technology, and maintain them over time.
• Contribute to the establishment, evolution and continued compliance with standard practices and processes within the disciplines.
• Assist with adherence to technology policies and comply with all security controls, including cryptographic standards, certificate governance, cloud security controls, and AI usage policies.
• Ensure all work products meets /exceeds FINRA standards and risks are effectively managed.
• Participate in periodic Disaster Recovery (DR), Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) testing and reporting, including certificate expiry, key recovery, and WAF failover scenarios.
• Resource Management
• Identify and hire resource/skills needed within their organization, including WAF engineers, PKI/cryptography specialists, software developers, and cloud security engineers.
• Responsible for staff performance management and training.
• Coordinate assignment of subordinate staff.
• Demonstration of FINRA’s values.
• Collaboration, both in-person and virtually, in furtherance of FINRA’s mission of investor protection and market integrity.

Education/Experience Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related discipline with at least ten (10) years of related experience, or equivalent training and / or work experience; Master’s degree and past Financial Services industry experience preferred.
• Minimum of 5 years of technical project, program and / or practice area oversight.
• Past experience influencing decisions and building conscience across internal and external partners
• Knowledge of business, technology and management principles involved in strategic planning, organizational change management, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, and coordination of people and resources.
• Experience must include direct experience in one of the following areas: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and / or compliance.
• Extensive knowledge of industry leading technology best practices including familiarity with technology methodologies including at least one of ISO-9000, ITIL, Agile and iterative.
• Excellent written and verbal technical communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to develop effective working relationships and leverage those relationships to improve the quality of work products.
• Must be able to identify, evaluate and recommend processes, tools, technologies and / or products to meet business and budgetary requirements.
• Should be well organized, thorough, and able to handle competing priorities.
• Ability to maintain focus and develop proficiency in new skills rapidly.
• Ability to work in a fast paced environment.

Work Conditions:

• Hybrid work environment, with defined in-person presence requirements.

• Occasional travel and extended hours may be required.

For work that is performed in CO, CT, IL, PA, MA, MD, VA, WA, DC, NY, NJ, WA please refer to the chart below for the salary range for the corresponding location. FINRA complies with all state and local pay transparency laws and regulations requiring the disclosure of salary ranges for the position. In addition to location, actual compensation is based on various factors, including but not limited to, the candidate’s skill set, level of experience, education, and market considerations.

Boston, MA: $154,400 - $299,600

Chicago, IL: $147,600 - $286,500

Denver, CO: $134,400 - $260,400

Jericho, NY: $154,400 - $299,600

Jersey City, NJ: $161,200 - $312,600

Philadelphia, PA: $147,600 - $286,500

New York, NY: $161,200 - $312,600

Rockville, MD: $154,400 - $299,600

Tysons, VA: $154,400 - $299,600

Washington, DC: $154,400 - $299,600

Woodbridge, NJ: $154,400 - $299,600

Connecticut State: $134,400 - $312,600

Washington State: $134,400 - $312,600

#LI-Hybrid

Employees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Non-exempt employees are also eligible for overtime pay in accordance with federal, state, or local law. As part of its dedication to employee wellness, FINRA provides comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance. Additional insurance includes basic life, accidental death and dismemberment, supplemental life, spouse/domestic partner and dependent life, and spouse/domestic partner and dependent accidental death and dismemberment, short- and long-term disability, long-term care, business travel accident, disability and legal. FINRA offers immediate participation and vesting in a 401(k) plan with company match and eligibility for participation in an additional FINRA-funded retirement contribution, tuition reimbursement, commuter benefits, and other benefits that support employee wellness, such as adoption assistance, backup family care, surrogacy benefits, employee assistance, and wellness programs.

Time Off and Paid Leave*

FINRA encourages its employees to focus on their health and wellness in many ways, including through a generous time-off program starting at 15 days of paid time off (increasing with years of service, up to 25 days), 5 personal days, and 9 sick days, unless otherwise required by law (all pro-rated in the first year). Additionally, we are proud to support our communities by providing two volunteer service days (based on full-time schedule). Other paid leave includes military leave, jury duty leave, bereavement leave, voting and election official leave for federal, state or local primary and general elections, care of a family member leave (available after 90 days of employment); and childbirth and parental leave (available after 90 days of employment). Full-time employees receive nine paid holidays.

*Based on full-time schedule

Important Information

FINRA’s Code of Conduct imposes restrictions on employees’ investments and requires financial disclosures that are uniquely related to our role as a securities regulator. FINRA employees are required to disclose to FINRA all brokerage accounts that they maintain, and those in which they control trading or have a financial interest (including any trust account of which they are a trustee or beneficiary and all accounts of a spouse, domestic partner or minor child who lives with the employee) and to authorize their broker-dealers to provide FINRA with duplicate statements for all of those accounts. All of those accounts are subject to the Code’s investment and securities account restrictions, and new employees must comply with those investment restrictions—including disposing of any security issued by a company on FINRA’s Prohibited Company List or obtaining a written waiver from their Executive Vice President—by the date they begin employment with FINRA. Employees may only maintain securities accounts that must be disclosed to FINRA at one or more securities firms that provide an electronic feed (e‑feed) of data to FINRA, and must move securities accounts from other securities firms to a firm that provides an e‑feed within three months of beginning employment.

You can read more about these restrictions here.

As standard practice, employees must also execute FINRA’s Employee Confidentiality and Invention Assignment Agreement without qualification or modification and comply with the company’s policy on nepotism.

Washington state applicants:

click here for required notice(s).

Search Firm Representatives

Please be advised that FINRA is not seeking assistance or accepting unsolicited resumes from search firms for this employment opportunity. Regardless of past practice, a valid written agreement and task order must be in place before any resumes are submitted to FINRA. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at FINRA without a valid