Principal Architect, Security Architecture

Cencora; Minnesota; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Cencora is seeking a Principal Architect, Security Architecture, to define and govern cybersecurity architecture across the enterprise, translating business strategy and regulatory obligations into practical security standards and patterns.

You will collaborate with Cybersecurity, domain engineering, cloud and data teams to reduce risk, articulate target-state architectures, and guide technology decisions that balance security with business needs.

Qualifications

• Senior security technologist with enterprise-scale architecture experience.
• Ability to align security strategy with business goals and regulatory obligations.
• Proven track record delivering cross-domain security patterns and standards.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve enterprise cybersecurity architecture aligned with business strategy and risk appetite.
• Establish security principles, reference architectures, standards, and design requirements.
• Lead security architecture reviews for platforms, cloud, data, and applications; document decisions and risks.
• Translate Zero Trust into practical architectures across identity, workloads, networks, and data.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture to embed security within overall technology strategy.
• Guide multi-year cybersecurity architecture roadmaps and ensure cohesive security governance.

Skills

Security Architecture

Enterprise Architecture

Cloud Security

Zero Trust

Regulatory & Compliance

Job description

Our team members are at the heart of everything we do. At Cencora, we are united in our responsibility to create healthier futures, and every person here is essential to us being able to deliver on that purpose. If you want to make a difference at the center of health, come join our innovative company and help us improve the lives of people and animals everywhere.

Job Details

Summary

The Principal Architect, Security Architecture is a senior individual-contributor and enterprise technical leadership role responsible for defining, governing, and advancing cybersecurity architecture across the enterprise in collaboration with other Principal Architects, Cybersecurity Architects, & Cybersecurity and domain engineering teams. The Principal Architect translates business strategy, technology direction, cyber risk, regulatory obligations, and emerging threats into practical security architectures, principles, patterns, standards, and technology decisions that enable the business while measurably reducing risk. This role operates beyond individual cybersecurity products or domains. The Principal Architect - Cybersecurity works horizontally across the functional technology domains and the related security practices for Cloud, Infrastructure, Endpoint, Network, Storage; while also collaborating and representing core cybersecurity practices such as Identity & Access Management, Application Security, Data Security, AI Security, Cyber Defense, SaaS Security, OT/IoT, and emerging technologies, ensuring that security capabilities function as an integrated enterprise architecture rather than independent controls. The successful candidate must combine the depth of a senior security technologist with the influence, judgment, and communication capabilities of an enterprise architect. This position is expected to challenge legacy assumptions, resolve difficult cross-domain architecture decisions, simplify security complexity, and establish clear technical direction where ownership or requirements are ambiguous. This is not primarily a documentation, compliance, or architecture-review role. The Principal Architect - Cybersecurity is expected to shape technology and cybersecurity platform strategy and materially influence what the enterprise builds, buys, integrates, modernizes, and retires.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Cybersecurity Architecture

• Define and evolve the enterprise cybersecurity architecture aligned with business strategy, enterprise architecture, technology modernization, regulatory obligations, and the organization’s risk appetite.
• Establish cybersecurity architecture principles, reference architectures, reusable patterns, technical standards, and design requirements.
• Maintain or support a multi-year cybersecurity architecture roadmap connecting strategic security objectives with technology investments and engineering execution.
• Translate Zero Trust principles into practical architecture across identity, applications, workloads, networks, endpoints, data, cloud, SaaS, OT/IoT, and third-party connectivity.
• Identify architectural fragmentation, redundant controls, security gaps, and opportunities to simplify the security technology ecosystem.
• Establish clear target-state architectures and pragmatic transition architectures for complex legacy environments.

Architecture Governance & Decision Authority

• Serve as a senior cybersecurity architecture authority for significant technology initiatives and high-risk architecture decisions.
• Lead or materially influence security architecture reviews for strategic platforms, cloud environments, applications, infrastructure, acquisitions, SaaS platforms, data environments, and emerging technologies.
• Determine when enterprise security requirements require standardization versus when risk-based exceptions or domain-specific patterns are appropriate.
• Document significant architectural decisions, alternatives, assumptions, dependencies, and residual risks.
• Establish escalation mechanisms for architecture decisions that cannot be resolved within individual engineering or security domains.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture to ensure cybersecurity architecture is embedded within enterprise technology strategy rather than operating as a downstream approval function.

Will Lead or Collaborate to Deliver Cloud & Platform Security Architecture

• Define security architecture across public cloud, private cloud, hybrid infrastructure, SaaS, containers, Kubernetes, serverless, APIs, and platform engineering environments.
• Establish cloud security patterns covering identity, workload protection, network segmentation, encryption, secrets, logging, configuration, exposure management, and security automation.
• Guide adoption of cloud-native security capabilities and determine where enterprise security platforms provide greater consistency or risk reduction.
• Drive security architecture aligned with hyperscaler well-architected principles while maintaining consistent enterprise control objectives.
• Partner with cloud, platform engineering, and all other applicable cybersecurity engineering team to embed security into landing zones, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, developer platforms, and automated provisioning.

Will Lead or Collaborate to Deliver Data & AI Security

• Establish architecture principles and patterns protecting enterprise data throughout its lifecycle.
• Define security architectures addressing classification, encryption, tokenization, key management, secrets, DLP, data access, privacy, lineage, and data movement.
• Provide architecture leadership for generative AI, machine learning, AI agents, RAG architectures, model integration, AI platforms, and third-party AI services.
• Establish patterns addressing AI-specific threats including sensitive-data disclosure, prompt injection, insecure tool use, excessive agency, model supply-chain risk, identity, authorization, and AI application monitoring.
• Partner with AI, Data, Privacy, Legal, Risk, and