Lead Cryptography Architecture & Engineering

American Express; Charlotte (NC); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

American Express is seeking an experienced cryptographic architecture leader to shape enterprise crypto strategy and capabilities across payment and non-payment environments. You will define patterns, drive crypto-agility, and partner with engineering to implement secure cryptographic solutions that scale with the business.

The role requires deep expertise in modern cryptography, HSMs, PKI, and cloud cryptography, with a track record of delivering architecture-as-code and reusable reference

Qualifications

• Significant experience in cryptographic engineering, cybersecurity architecture, applied cryptography or security engineering in a large-scale technology environment.
• Deep knowledge of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, encryption, digital signatures, hashing, TLS, key establishment and exchange, and modern cryptographic protocols.
• Strong experience with HSMs, enterprise key-management systems, PKI, certificates and cryptographic key lifecycle management.
• Experience designing encryption solutions across applications, APIs, databases, infrastructure and cloud environments.
• Demonstrated ability to translate security requirements into working technical architectures and reusable engineering patterns.
• Software engineering or automation capability to develop prototypes, integrations, policy or architecture-as-code and technical reference implementations.
• Experience working across engineering, architecture, product and cybersecurity organizations.
• Ability to communicate complex cryptographic concepts, risks and architecture decisions to engineering teams and senior leadership.
• Post-quantum cryptography (PQC), NIST PQC standards and enterprise crypto-agility programs.
• Experience within financial services or another highly regulated environment.
• Cloud KMS and HSM architectures across AWS, Azure and/or GCP.
• Large-scale cryptographic migrations or modernization programs.
• Payment cryptography, payment HSMs, payment key management and PCI requirements.

Responsibilities

• Define enterprise cryptographic architecture and strategic patterns across environments and platforms.
• Lead post-quantum cryptography readiness and crypto-agility initiatives.
• Provide architecture leadership for payment cryptography, HSMs, and key management.
• Design modern approaches for enterprise encryption and certificates, including cloud cryptography.
• Evaluate emerging cryptographic technologies and use cases such as blockchain and distributed ledgers.
• Translate security standards into architecture-as-code and reusable patterns.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to prototype and implement cryptographic solutions.
• Integrate cryptographic requirements into SDLC and Permit to Operate processes.
• Drive adoption of enterprise cryptographic services and retire fragmented implementations.
• Assess cryptographic risk based on algorithms, data sensitivity, and industry standards.
• Provide senior technical leadership for cryptographic vulnerabilities and architecture decisions.
• Mentor architects and engineers to raise cryptographic capability.

Skills

Cryptographic engineering

Cybersecurity architecture

Applied cryptography

Security engineering

HSMs

Key management

PKI & certificates

Cloud KMS

Post-quantum cryptography

Tools

Blockchain cryptography

Job description

American Express is seeking an experienced cryptographic architecture leader to shape enterprise crypto strategy and capabilities across payment and non-payment environments. You will define patterns, drive crypto-agility, and partner with engineering to implement secure cryptographic solutions that scale with the business.

The role requires deep expertise in modern cryptography, HSMs, PKI, and cloud cryptography, with a track record of delivering architecture-as-code and reusable reference